By
Joseph Palazzo
On July 12th, 2004, I received a phone call, the kind that everyone has always dreaded. My doctor’s secretary demanded that I’d show up the very next morning. That and the fact that I had a scheduled appointment due the following week was a foreboding sign of ill tidings. The very next morning, my worst suspicions were confirmed: the biopsy had revealed that the tumour lodged in my stomach was cancerous. It felt as if a ten-ton truck had hit me. But there was no time to commiserate, no time to think, I was put to a series of preliminary tests, x-rays and catscans. And on August 3rd, I was admitted for an operation to remove 80% of my stomach at the Montreal Jewish General Hospital – there aren’t enough words in the dictionary that can convey my gratitude and describe the excellent quality of that fine institute.
I came out of the operating room with tubes traveling through my nose down to what was left of my stomach. But the operation was declared a success, and the long recovery began. Looming over my mind though was the eternal question: Did the tumour penetrate the sub-mucosal layer, in other words, did it spread, and if so, how widespread? As I learned to breathe with these tubes stuck in my throat, to salivate and move about in a clumsy way every time I had a bowel movement, I’m fortunate enough to meet with doctors, nurses, orderlies and the slew of friends and relatives who put up a smile, offered a helping hand, all in the name of making that moment a little less painful, a little less unbearable, and a little more endurable for me.
After a week, the tubes came off with great relief, giving me a little more room to manoeuvre. Unfortunately, my body reacted otherwise, and for the next forty-eight hours, my whole life was taken up with the sole purpose of vomiting green, stinking bile by the bucket. It stopped only because I collapsed out of sheer exhaustion. But the nightmare had only begun. The next morning I suffered from total amnesia. From the accounts of my wife, my son and the kind hospital staff, I didn’t know who I was, where I was and didn’t recognize anyone tending to my care. For my dear wife, this sudden shift in fortune was more than she could bear and understandably fell into a panic mode as my amnesia lasted a full five hours. Fortunately I did recover and up to now I still don’t know what plunged me into that darkness – a combination of medication, stress and sheer exhaustion might have caused it, so I was told.
The next step for me was to ingest small amounts of solids but this important step was obscured by a persistent bout of diarrhoea that forced the medical team to be on its toes. I was given a regular cocktail of pills and injections and a battery of blood tests to wrestle with this latest ailment. Everyday was a struggle but everyday I grew a little stronger. And when my doctor, Dr. Fenster, announced that the cancer had not spread, I was given a new lease on life. Once cancer was a death sentence. I know now that this isn’t so thanks to the miracles of science and the unwavering dedication of scores of people.
There are side-effects still being felt, like everything tastes too much of everything – too salty, too sweet, too orangey, or too lemony. I can’t bear the smell of newspaper, which has put a damper on one of my favourite activities – reading the morning papers. There are persistent rumblings in my stomach that make me feel queasy. And I get the regular cycle of hot flushes, cold sweats, wild chills and waves of disgusting nausea. But I am cancer free. I’ve beaten the beast, for now anyway. I can start looking forward to the day when my life will be back on track and everyday can be a new golden opportunity to embrace life in all its diversity. Things will happen, no matter what. The universe is not going to rearrange itself just to make me happy. But that’s my job – to make me happy – and it’s up to me to rise to that challenge.
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| Joseph Palazzo | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Get to know more about me | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| my home page | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Author of Zohra: the Planet of Truth and Knowledge,(2003)and Zohra: The New Queen(2006). | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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