NEW BOOK (2025)
from the Preface–
When I was seventy-four, a series of calamitous illnesses beset me: acute painful gallbladder disease off-and-on for months that sent me into emergency surgery far from home; lung cancer that would result in the loss of my right lung; open-heart surgery that almost killed me; and the return of cancer that doctors had thought to be cured, now progressed to the worst uncurable stage.
That was it, I thought. I became fatalistic and prepared to die probably within two years. I read as much as I could, looking
for slivers of hope. It came at long last after one lucky find of a book gave me some optimism. That book led me to another and another. I learned that while cancer survival statistics, especially for the stage IV that I was at, are grim on average, overall they’re spread out over a survival curve. The average may look grim, but there are always people who survive far more than the average. The task facing me was to get as far on the good side of that survival curve as possible.
When I was seventy-four, a series of calamitous illnesses beset me: acute painful gallbladder disease off-and-on for months that sent me into emergency surgery far from home; lung cancer that would result in the loss of my right lung; open-heart surgery that almost killed me; and the return of cancer that doctors had thought to be cured, now progressed to the worst uncurable stage.
That was it, I thought. I became fatalistic and prepared to die probably within two years. I read as much as I could, looking for slivers of hope. It came at long last after one lucky find of a book gave me some optimism. That book led me to another and to another. I learned that while cancer survival statistics, especially for the stage IV that I was at, are grim on average, overall they’re spread out over a survival curve. The average may look grim, but there are always people who survive far more than the average. The task facing me was to get as far on the good side of that survival curve as possible.
I sought out narratives of long-surviving stage IV patients. All indicated that they had done something on their own beyond conventional medical treatment—crucial as that was—to increase their odds. They worked at recovery. Some of what they did I already knew. There was also much to be learned. It was the same with my previous gallbladder, lung loss, and heart recoveries.
This is a memoir mostly about what I did—useful and not always so—to recover from these illnesses to the point that I passed my eightieth birthday feeling much better than when I began the six years of serious illnesses, any one of which that could have killed or made me miserable for the rest of my life.
FIRST CHAPTER REVIEWS
ORDER THE BOOK ($6.95 ebook, $9.95 paperback)