Making a Way in the Wilderness

While reading the newspaper on Friday evening, I was shocked to see an obituary for a State College friend who has lung cancer. The last I had heard from Nina Fosnacht  was a Facebook post saying she was admitted to the hospital on April 1. She passed away 6 days later, just shy of her 61st birthday. I met Nina because I joined a Facebook lung cancer support group, soon after I was diagnosed in Hamburg. I noticed that Nina and I had 3 mutual friends, so I sent her a message to inquire. Not only did she live in State College, but we also had the same primary care doctor (the fabulous Dr. Brian McCleary). Since I was in Germany at the time, I didn't have a US oncologist yet and wasn't sure who to pick, or even which lung cancer center I should go to (University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, various options in Philadelphia, New York, or DC). It was Nina who recommended that I see her oncologist, Dr. Villaruz, at UPMC, and I'm extremely grateful for that recommendation. We ...

When I begin composing a new post in my head, I know it is time to write. I don't know if anyone has used the term "health innocence" before, but if not, I'm coining it now.* Since my lung cancer diagnosis, I have lost my health innocence. Health innocence is the belief that we and our closest loved ones will inhabit what Susan Sontag calls the Kingdom of the Well**, at least until we're senior citizens, when health problems can be expected and reciting a litany of ailments becomes the butt of jokes. Now that I've crossed over to the Kingdom of the Sick, I no longer think of X health problem as outside of the realm of possibility--for me or anyone. After all, what is the likelihood that a super-healthy, 49-year-old runner who's never held a cigarette or lived or worked in highly polluted conditions would develop lung cancer? Or that less than a year earlier, my nephew would be diagnosed with colon cancer, on the cusp of turning 36? Exactly.  Cancer was one...