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Being a patient is part of being alive. Sooner or later most of us go through it. Disease and serious illness often strike quite randomly, and when they do, we quickly become subject to the impersonal forces of biochemistry and pharmacology. We rarely think about this beforehand and are often totally unprepared for it when it happens. Suddenly there we are, subject to a standard treatment protocol.
Darrel Noellendorf learned this by experience during a month confined to a solitary and sterile hospital room where I received a life-saving stem cell transplant. His room was somebody’s workspace, his schedule was somebody’s work routine, his immune system was systematically crushed, and his prognosis was out of his hands. There was no assurance that it would all work out for the best.
Having spent 30 years teaching philosophy to college students, He was facing the biggest test of all, perhaps the final exam. These are his reflections before, during and after treatment, written in real-time. In his words, 'my brain was sometimes addled by the chemotherapy that sapped my energy and destroyed my immune system, but I wrote out of the conviction that living well includes living well with disease, and eventually living well facing death.'
This memoir expresses those convictions along with those that the virtues of patience, courage, trust, and hope serve us well. A measure of good humor also can’t hurt.
Acknowledgements
Introductory Note
Part I: Diagnosis
1 First Thoughts and Second Opinions
2 Healthcare for All Pt. 1
3 Patients and Patience
4 Father to Son and Back
5 Give It Up for Lent!
Part II: Treatment
6 Day 7: The Countdown Begins
7 Day 6: Carpe Diem
8 Day 5: Vegetarianism Is Not an Option
9 Day 4: Sweatin’ and Shakin’
10 Day 3: Making Decisions When You Can’t Think
11 Day 2: Nausea and Fatigue
12 Day 1: Courage
13 Day 0: Communion
14 Day +1: Confinement
15 Day +2: Waiting and Anxiety
16 Day +3: Relaxed
17 Day +4: Toiling and Spinning
18 Day +5: Healthcare for All Pt. 2
19 Day +6: Patience and Hope?
20 Day +7: A Letter Arrives
21 Day +8: Anaemia
22 Day +9: Why I Write
23 Day +10: Why I Dyed My Hair Blue
24 Day +11: Shorn
25 Day +12: Tired, Itchy, and Hiccupping
26 Day +13: Waiting
27 Day +14: Signs of Progress
28 Day +15: Turn Me Lose, Set Me Free
29 Day +16: Fresh Air
30 Day +17: Postponement
Part III: Recovery
31 Home Sweet Home
32 Home Update
33 The Social Determinants of My Survival
34 Letting the Days Go By
35 A Thread of Good Fortune
36 Magical Thinking
37 Hope Kept Me Eating
38 Sunshine, Suffering, Rebirth, and Freedom
39 Food Aversions
40 Inching Towards Normalcy
41 Human Fatigue and Canine Anxiety
42 Healthcare for All Pt. 3
43 Still Wearing My Helmet
44 Same as It Ever Was
45 Who Is That Masked Man?
46 Inspiration in the Oncology/Haematology Waiting Room
47 With a Little Help from My Friends
48 Springtime on My Face
49 Feeling the Love … and the Likes
50 Disease, Bodily Alienation, and Transhumanism
51 Dem Fingernails
52 Traversing the Rim of the Valley of the Shadow of Death
53 The Examined Illness
Epilogue: Living with Mortality