The Ambiguity of Maybe: A Memoir

When I was diagnosed with prostate cancer early in the millennium year, I found myself talking to many people: my mother, my brother Steve, John Gannon, Bill Carroll, Bill Thompson, and many others.

Oddly enough, all these people are deceased. They all died of cancer.

Maybe it's the word "cancer" that focuses my consciousness like few other words in the lexicon on the eternal and everlasting spirits. Or, maybe it's my fascination with the magical realism literature of Central and South America, where the dead mingle with the alive. Or, maybe these people became my conversation partners because I chose to keep my diagnosis secret until the day of my operation, save for my family, a very few friends, and my employer.

One of my favorite novels is Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban. The main character, after killing a wild boar, says, "your turn now my turn later." I wondered if this cancer diagnosis would be my turn to die, or if, in the spirit of Riddley Walker, it was some one else's turn to go over to the other side. There was no way to know for sure.

Who To Tell?

I thought it best to save most friends and associates from an undue burden by keeping mute on what can be a life threatening illness until there was certainty, one way or another. Why should I have them worry about me before the results from surgery would be known? I have borne the weight of worry that family members and friends carry upon hearing the cancer diagnosis. I thought it a good move on my part to spare my friendship circle this burden.

The opposite, of course, happened. Some wondered why I did not confide in them. Others thought our friendship was less deep than they thought. Maybe my momentary secrecy was a mistake. Maybe this was why I was speaking with the dead.

A Unique Place

A hospital is truly a marvelous and mysterious place. Miracles are performed there daily. Life is given back to patients in less dramatic ways, but no more real, than Lazarus' post-mortem encounter with Jesus. Yet often I wonder how these miracles can possibly happen. The apparent chaos and confusion that surrounds so much of hospital routine does not seem a likely setting for miracles.

Chaplains came to see me. A Catholic chaplain stopped in before my surgery. A few days after surgery a Presbyterian chaplain visited me even though I am Roman Catholic. We had a wonderful conversation. He explained to me that the Catholic chaplain was off that day. I told him of my association with the Presbyterian Church through book discussion groups I lead at Fourth Presbyterian Church in Chicago.

He asked me if I wanted Catholic communion brought to me every day. I told him I was delighted to be speaking to a Presbyterian minister because a Catholic minister might not appreciate my refusal. I think too highly of participation in The Lord's Supper to minimize it in the form of a host delivered to a hospital room. I know many Catholics have other views of communion calls, but, for me, the practice of distributing hosts to every Catholic patient reminds me a little too much of the passage from one of J.D. Salinger's short stories, "Seymour - An Introduction." One of the Glass family children, Waker, a Catholic priest, is rumored to have been disciplined, "to free him of a persistent temptation to administer the sacramental wafer to his parishioners' lips by standing back two or three feet and trajecting it in a lovely arc over his left shoulder."

I myself don't care for many visitors while in a hospital. A few is fine, but a lot gets difficult. So I told most of my friends to postpone visiting me until I returned home. When I came home, the miracle of life given back to me in the hospital, friends rallied round with flowers, food, fraternity, cards, calls, and E-mail. I was feeling good enough to enjoy these things. I was grateful to be included in people's busy schedules. I did not feel alone.

Religious Rhetoric?

A lot of ink gets spilled today over religious identity of health care institutions. It's all very strange to me. Let's face it, I was in a Catholic hospital because that is where my Jewish doctor practices. I go to a Jewish urologist because he is one of the most highly recommended and respected specialists in the metropolitan area. And from what I could tell, many of the hospital workers, lab technicians, and nurses' assistants were from parts of the world where one would assume either Hindu or Buddhist spiritual traditions are predominant. It looked to me like a great interfaith mix, all these people in health care working in a hospital that is intent, ironically, on impressing patients with its specific religious heritage.

The Presence of Ambiguity

I have discovered that "maybe" becomes the operative word when dealing with illness. My doctor responded to many of my questions with, "maybe." He is not God, but a mere mortal like the rest of us, and to expect definitive answers from him or any other doctor is grossly unfair. Yet, "maybe" leaves this patient in a zone of uncertainty that is uncomfortably real. Many maybes continue after the operation, after the hospitalization, and, even now, when visiting the doctor for the postoperative monthly checkups.

The Presence of God?

Surely God is not in illness; such divinity would be a sick God, indeed. Rather, I like to think of God as present in the conversations I initially had with the dead. After all, there is only a thin veil that divides us. I like to think of God in the community of family and friends who rose to the occasion by supporting me in my illness. This was apparent to me while in the hospital, but, more so, after I returned home. And I like to think of the divine in the incredible array of interfaith people who come together to make hospitals venues for miracles these days. God is so much larger than any one religious identity, regardless of how much any institution tries to manifest its single tradition. For me, these are certainties that override the many maybes of illness.

A Concluding Unscientific Postscript

I am cured because of a medical test's ability to detect prostate cancer at an early stage, because of my admittedly privileged access to health care known as good insurance, and because of the myriad health care workers of whose skills I was beneficiary.

I am now known as a cancer survivor. I vigorously preach the value and necessity of PSA testing to my male friends who do not regularly have this test. Some listen and schedule an appointment for PSA testing. Others refuse to do so. Most, however, respond to my exhortation by telling me, "maybe."