Our story in the August issue, “A Father’s Brave Battle with Throat Cancer,” really touched a nerve. We heard from readers who had been diagnosed with the same cancer, caused by the HPV virus, such as this one:

“I was a 38-year-old with the same condition. Only a person who has been through cancer can understand the feelings of pain, fear, anger, and disbelief. This story touched me deeply.”

We heard from educators who want to raise awareness about this common virus and its little-known consequences:

“I teach Health and Human Biology. I need copies of this article for my teaching. I am very concerned that today’s youth don’t think of oral sex as ‘sex.’ I just started hearing about this in health journals and newsletters. I need to spread the word!”

And we heard from doctors, nurses, and health care workers who deal with patients like Steve every day:

“I am very touched by Mr. Reynolds’ heartbreaking and honest story. As a team member for my oncology clinic, I work every day with cancer patients. And when they go home, they are mother, sister, daughter, son, and father, like Mr. Reynolds. I find myself crying as I read this story. It reminds me to celebrate life, while it’s also OK to give into a few moments of sorrow and fear. Thank you, Reader’s Digest, for continuing to publish stories that keep us alive and humble.”

My blog earlier this summer, “A Cancer Cause You Need to Know About,” including an update on how Steve was doing, was one of our most-read blogs of the month. Steve is such a good writer in his own right (in fact, he's working on a book about his journey with this illness) that I asked him to share some of his thoughts now, one year after completing his treatment. Turns out, Yankee Stadium plays a role:

SO, HOW AM I NOW?
By Stephen Reynolds

As part of my checkup one year after cancer treatment, I had a full body PET scan. Climbing into a dark plastic coffin for half an hour with iodine in your veins is a pretty weird thing to have to do. Being trapped in a dark, airless box without being able to move—well, it’s like looking though a tiny crack into the fear in the back of your mind.

But as I was lying there on my back, arms and legs pinned, inside that giant space odyssey scan-a-scope pod thing that makes noises like a lawn mower engine, I was thinking: “This big, expensive machine, and all that staff to run it, just to see if some cell level mutation has occurred in me again. Really, I've been feeling fine, and it all seems like a ghastly waste."

Until…well, the damn thing lit up. Something in the sinus or hard palate area. After a follow-up CT scan and exam, my surgeon, Dr. Fury, says he thinks it’s probably nothing. But now I am launched on a series of due diligence appointments: my surgeon, the oncology dentist, the radiation oncologist. More worry.

I think about recurrence all the time. Every day. But now I am living it—maybe. Probably not. But perhaps. “Recurrence is bad.” That’s the message I have heard over and over. “Bad” meaning “chances of survival drastically reduced” bad.

Making my personal moment more fraught is the current public moment. It’s a weird quirk of timing that I ponder cancer recurrence and all the questions of loss and finality this implies while here in New York City, on the last day of summer 2008, two elements in some nucleus of what it is to be about and from and of New York are disappearing. In the past few days, Yankee Stadium and Wall Street have come to their own ends as we have known them.

I can’t do anything about the debacle of Wall Street. But one thing I did do was take my five-year-old son, Tynan, to Yankee Stadium last Saturday, the next-to-last game at the old park, or the new-old park. Managed to get some of my favorite seats, first row of the deck, on the rail, above the third base dugout. You can really see the pitches pretty well from there, and you can look into the Yankee dugout.

Steve with his son, Tynan, before the penultimate game at Yankee Stadium, September 20, 2008. The old park reminds him of his boyhood, of old New York, of carefree days, and "will be missed more than people realize," he says.

Thinking back to visits there, starting with my own 40 years ago to see Mickey Mantle on a stifling Bronx August day, the grass was that same brilliant green. This stadium is not that one, of course, as we all know. I can still see the old stadium deck overhang, birds wheeling around the beams, so many (so often) empty seats, disappearing up into shadow. For me as a kid in the early ’70s before the renovation, it was like an old gabled mansion, full of grandeur, mystery, and history.

I think it would have been harder to accept tearing it down had it not been renovated. But it seems that there is an acceptance among many fans that the current park was not a very good remodeling job anyway, so now let’s do it in full. The metaphor is not lost on me, worried as I am about my own vulnerable but venerable facade. It's kind of like how I talk to myself about going back to the gym: "You lost 50 pounds during your cancer treatment, Steve, now how about trying to get some strength back?"

Saturday was a high, dry September day, the last gold heat of summer in the sun and the twitches of autumn cool in the breeze. After we had walked up the ramps to our section’s portal, I turned to Tynan and said, “Are you ready?” And we held hands and ran out into the sunshine. The field was stunning, radiating lime and blues in the green sea of that outfield. I may or may not have a recurrence, but for this moment, it was almost worth it. Our day together will never be lost.