Radiant Joy
Your head is already in the tiger’s mouth. There is no escape.
Ramana Maharshi
A few months ago I found out that I had advanced prostate cancer. That’s the name they give to cancer that comes back after a radical prostatectomy. At first I thought I would die in a year and go out in a blaze off glory. I was almost disappointed when I found out that the prognosis is around ten or so years. The treatment options were confusing and a little scary, with possible side effects ranging from impotence, to incontinence, and serious bowel problems. I opted for radiation, which means receiving forty treatments over a period of two months.
Every day, except weekends and holidays, I climb into the car to make the forty-minute drive to the hospital in Kahului, Maui; I bring the dogs along for company, a book on tape for entertainment, and enough water so that I can fill up my bladder before each treatment. I drive past some of the most beautiful sights in the world—the famous windsurfing beach called Hookipa, the West Maui mountains in the distance, and the massive 10,000 foot Haleakala mountain—House of the Sun—on my left. It’s not exactly a chore. I park my car in the specially assigned spaces for cancer patients (the best perk of all) and walk across the road to the Pacific Cancer Clinic.
“Peter, how are you?” Jeannie asks from behind the front desk. Energetic, petite, and always cheerful, she greets each cancer patient personally as they come in for chemotherapy or radiation. She is one of those extraordinary angels that lights everyone up with her warmth and caring.
“I’m great Jeannie. How’s your son doing?”
“He’s good,” she says cheerily. Her son Brock was severely injured in a motorcycle accident two months ago and lost his left foot.
“You’re amazing Jeannie. I don’t know how you do it.” She not only takes care of everyone who comes to the Cancer Clinic, but her son, her daughter, and husband.
Nerissa appears at the double doors with her wonderful smile and signals that it’s time for my treatment.
“Got to go.”
“Bye . . .”
On the way to the x-ray room, I wave to Janice at her desk, then say hello to Tim and Steve, the two radiology technicians—those unsung heroes who spend all day treating folks with every form of cancer imaginable—brain cancer, stomach cancer, prostate cancer, breast cancer—some of them so sick they can’t even walk. Yet somehow they remain cheery and upbeat. They lead me into a room with an enormous machine that looks like something out of Star Wars. The body cast for my legs is already waiting for me on the narrow metal platform. I take off my shoes, and feeling like a fighter pilot fitting into his flight suit, I put my legs into the cast and lie back down. The cast ensures that my legs are in the same position for each treatment.
Whether out of laziness or because it’s sunny and warm most days in Hawaii, I normally wear a T-shirt and shorts—and nothing else. I slip down my shorts so they can see the tattoos on my hips and pubic area.
“Hope you don’t mind,” I say, “I’m going commando again.”
“Don’t worry, we’ve seen it all,” Tim says.
“You’re just an old hippie,” Steve laughs.
Meanwhile Tim moves the table into position with a remote so that I am in the exact spot for the radiation beams to reach my prostate bed. Even a millimeter off and the radiation will hit other parts of my body.
“Did you get up to Baldwin beach on the weekend?” I ask Steve, as he moves my body slightly on the table so that my tattoos line up with the infrared beams coming from either side of the room.
“Oh yeah, what a scene— families, boogie-boarders, tourists, guys drinking in the back of their pick-ups, another selling grass to the tourists—I had a ball.”
“Not to mention the babes,” I laugh.
“Here comes the goop,” Steve says, as he slides the sonogram reader over my lower abdomen. It feels cool and not unpleasant. Then he presses down on my bladder to get a reading. The pressure is intense. “Sorry about that.”
“No problem. Have you ever had one burst?”
“Not that I know of,” he laughs.
He and Tim watch on the TV monitor as the different overlays from the sonogram and the IGRT match up.
“Nice full bladder,” Tim says. “It looks like a Beefeater’s hat.”
“To me it feels like a big water balloon.”
“Almost there . . .” They make their final adjustments. “OK, you’re set.”
“Fire away!” I say, as they leave the room, electronically closing the foot-thick door behind them. The stereo in the corner plays Hawaiian music from the local radio station. A camera on the ceiling monitors me lying on the table. I lie with my eyes closed, alone in the room, as modern science does whatever it’s meant to do.
Soon there is a whirring sound as the machine starts to circle around my body on the table. Tim and Steve operate the machine remotely from another room. After rotating 45-degrees the machine stops and its bulbous head makes a clicking noise like a camera. Then there is a loud sustained beeeeeep that seems to go on forever as it shoots invisible rays down into the core of my body. Warning lights flash over the door: “CAUTION – BEAM IN USE.” The beep lasts for twenty seconds, and then the machine whirs to a different angle. More clicking, more beeps, as the machine moves around me, stopping at seven different angles to shoot 70 centigray of radiation into my body.
I know that some of these rays are damaging my bowel and my bladder, and that they may leave me impotent, but what could I possibly worry about? I lie on the table in total joy, a half smile on my face, distantly hearing all the noises going on around me—music drifting out of the radio, the machine whirring, the machine clicking, the hum of ventilation fans. I am the still center in the midst of all this activity. I could be worrying about what might happen in the future—will the cancer metastasize, will I die in pain and suffering?—but right now I feel fine, apart from a full bladder. All worry is nothing more than a projection of what may or may not happen in the future. In truth, there is no other moment other than lying here on this table right here, right now. Cancer, or no cancer. What do I care? This body will someday fall away. Whenever it does, I get to go home. The tiger has my head in its mouth, and I’m totally surrendered to whatever happens. There is no escape.