the discomfort of living amid extreme heat, monsoons, until-then-unimaginable poverty, and cultural displacement, and the pain of observing girl prostitutes living in squalor and women with their noses burned off by sulfuric acid thrown at them by their abusive husbands. But my time there was also filled with the self-knowledge and pride that I could endure and even thrive with discomfort, finding wonder and gratitude in the unmatched beauty and richness of a lush and unspoiled countryside and the unparalleled kindness and resilience of the people.
As I looked at this Bangladeshi woman who had chosen me to ask for directions, all the associations I have with Bangladesh—the juxtaposition of ugliness and beauty, suffering and joy, poverty and generosity—came back to me. My journey through cancer is not so different from my journey through Bangladesh; this cancer journey has been and is one filled with ugliness and beauty, suffering and joy, poverty and generosity. How could I help but think that this Bangladeshi woman’s momentary visit in my life was not random at all?
26
Invincibility
Every time I see Dr. A.C., my vital signs are measured by Tanya. Tanya is an outspoken, middle-aged black woman and mother of two, who likes to wear scrubs printed with different cartoon characters. Like beacons of cheer and light in a place that can be so grim, her scrubs have always entertained me as I expectantly wait to see what character it will be this time. We talk about cartoons, our kids, our vacations, and sometimes we gossip about the staff and even Dr. A.C., because, as I’ve said, I’m very nosy. Such conversations with the various people I encounter at the NYU Cancer Center—Tanya, the receptionists, the nurses, Dr. A.C. himself—lift my spirits; they make me feel like these people care about me and I about them, like they don’t view me as just a cancer patient but as a vital, involved, invested, and interested member of the human race who is more than just her cancer. I think most people would be surprised at how much I laugh in the cancer center.
It was during one of these conversations with Tanya that I asked casually, “So, you must see really sick people here.” Of course, I had noticed in my frequent stints in the waiting room that I was invariably one of the youngest people there, that I indeed, despite my diagnosis and prognosis, most often looked the healthiest.
Tanya lowered her voice into a conspiratorial whisper. “Oh, yeah. Some people come in looking like they’re two days away from death asking for treatment, or a second or third or fourth opinion.”
I was shocked. “Seriously?” In my many hours of hanging out in the waiting room and the exam rooms during the past twenty-one months, not so subtly checking out my fellow cancer patients out of the corner of my eye—or really, most often I stare—I had never seen anyone who looked that sick.
She nodded solemnly.
At my following visit, as I was leaving the exam room in which I had just met with Dr. A.C., an EMT was wheeling into my room a sickly old man with a few strands of wispy white hair. He lay there, on a stretcher, unmoving. Tanya rushed in to take his vitals, slamming the door as I made a narrow escape. She hadn’t been exaggerating! People who are very ill from cancer go to the ER or the hospital to address symptoms or complications; they don’t come to visit the oncologist in his office unless they want treatment or an opinion.
There was something disquieting about that man, about all the other patients near death who come to Dr. A.C.’s office and the offices of thousands of other oncologists in this country and throughout the world. More disturbing to me was the thought of the many others who go to see pseudodoctors and blatant charlatans in Mexico and Germany and South Africa or even New York City who prey on the desperately sick with their highly questionable treatments at the cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars and untold physical suffering. Not to mention the emotional trauma at the inevitable failure of such quackery. In the hope of physical salvation, people will spend their last dollars and last days drinking green sludge drawn from a swamp and filling their veins with a clear liquid of who the hell knows what. Desperate people go looking for miracles, and there is a shady industry that caters in said “miracles.”
I have told my good