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But anything with real flavor is torturous. Salt, lemon, sharp tastes of any kind are excruciating. I am reduced to water and protein drinks, soft eggs in the morning, and sometimes a bit of chicken potpie or the rediscovered joys of tuna casserole at night. I have so far resisted the fentanyl-based pain patches I am offered, but chewing becomes the most painful and difficult thing I can imagine. I swab my gums with lidocaine between bites of anything. Sometimes swallowing hurts so much, I almost black out.
We are concerned about Ty. He loves being in the larger apartment, running back and forth, looking out the windows, but he knows something is wrong. I am not going to work, and I am showing up late in the afternoons to collapse in my room. He wants to play with me, and I try, but some days I just don't have it and fall asleep in the middle of giving him a horsey ride. We have just hired a new babysitter as well, so he has a new sitter, a new apartment, and me acting like a limp rag. One night I am getting sick in my bathroom, and he awakes and starts to cry. My poor wife. My poor kid. All I have the energy to do is lie still and try not to bother them.
Each morning I haul myself out of bed and say goodbye to Hilary and Tynan. I try to eat something. Then I take a shower and clean my feeding tube and my mouth sores, get dressed, and, exhausted, get on the subway for yet another treatment. It is about 10 a.m. and rush hour is over. I get off at 68th Street. I will never forget walking down the slope of that street, with the February wind howling off the river, feeling hollow and broken, like a bell that swings but makes no sound.
I cave and tell Dr. Fury to give me that pain patch, which makes it a little easier to get through the day. I force myself to confront my microwaved tuna casserole every night. I force myself into the hospital cafeteria, where just the smell makes me retch, but I go through the act of chewing and swallowing and drinking by mouth rather than by tube. All the years of playing sports: Little League from ages 8 to 16, contact football from 10 to 18, lacrosse and running and lifting, tennis, boxing workouts, and sparring. My entire athletic career comes down to this -- moving my jaws, fighting through the pain in my mouth, defending my ability to swallow a little food.
I know I can make it when week four comes and the nurses say, "Still taking food by mouth? That's unusual."
Just when I think I know how to do all this -- how to wait for my radiation, and nap, and drink my two liters a day, and microwave my tuna casserole -- it's over. It is mid-March and I am finished. And then it gets worse. The chemo and radiation have residual effects, and the bottom drops out for me in mid-April. I have no energy, I'm nauseated, my ears are ringing, the skin on my neck is burned and rippled. My hair has turned gray, and I can't remember things. I have "chemo brain." My balance is lousy, and sometimes I use a cane. I've lost about 50 pounds, from my usual 200.
After three months in the two-bed, two-bath apartment, we move back to our little studio. It seems darker and gloomier than ever. Without the structure of treatment every day, I am neither here nor there. Still too sick to contemplate a return to work, I am irritable, in pain, torpid. I must wait for PET scans that will check for any leftover cancer cells. Drinking enough water is a challenge, and in late April I wind up in the hospital, dehydrated. The nausea and pain come in waves.
But I force myself to take walks. My sleep becomes less jagged, and I taper off the pain patch. Gradually, instead of sleeping in the afternoon, I can play with Tynan when he gets home from preschool. I take him to the park on weekends so he can ride his Spider-Man scooter. Neighbors and playmates do not recognize me in my diminished state, with short hair and a Foreign Legion cap.
Living with what we've all been through somehow gives my wife and me the courage to buy an apartment. In the summer we find a small two-bedroom in a neighborhood we like with pretty good schools. We deliberate and agonize. The subprime disaster sprouts as we are trying to lock in a mortgage. It takes my mind off cancer and scans.
The thought of going back into treatment if the PET scans reveal a recurrence is just awful. Finally they take the scans. On August 18, 2007, we close on the apartment. Two days later, Dr. Fury says I'm clean and can go back to work. That Saturday, we pack a car and drive out of Manhattan, headed to Cape Cod.
We have one of the best times of my life. I buy wet suits for Tynan and me, as protection against the cold Atlantic. I take him in on his Boogie Board and tow him around. We have a string of beautiful days, great afternoons with our friends on the beach. And we play airplanes in the surf. I have a strange feeling as I peer out toward Spain from under the umbrella. A flashback to the winter, to my walk down 68th Street, and I have a reverse déjà vu. I had been dreaming of this for so long. It is what kept me moving, into that cold wind, to be here, in this very moment. And when these grand two weeks are up, I find I can live with whatever happens next.
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