My Cancer Story: Part One

PROLOGUE: MAD COLON DISEASE

       At first, I thought it was the lousy British food. I had landed in London in mid-June and succumbed to a wicked case of jet lag. Or so I thought. A week, two, then three went by, and still I wasn't sleeping through the night. Restless; not in any pain, just not sleeping, and I hadn't been eating all that well, either. "Bangers and mash, buddy?" Not hardly . . . My wife, Paula, and I had arrived in the UK last summer, set to stay for the better part of a year. She would serve as associate producer on the Harry Potter film; I'd write from overseas, traveling back and forth to the States when necessary for work. . . . After a month or so, my sleep still somewhat restless, I notice I've lost some weight.

       Chris Columbus, the director [Home Alone, Stepmom] and longtime friend of mine and my wife's, asks Paula one day at dinner if I'm okay; he sees I've lost weight, too. I also start to feel occasional cramps in my stomach, or lower, even, down toward my groin. Upwards of my perineum, maybe, somewhere the hell down there. . . . I also have diarrhea at least a couple of times a week (British toilet paper sucks, by the way--c'mon, the war's been over fifty-five years), which I attribute to not only the plebian British food but to the pints of warm ale that I'm trying to get used to, nightly, at the local Haverstock Arms pub. No health ignoramus, I decide to call a doctor in London to see if what I have is a flare-up of colitis, the disease I was diagnosed with--and treated for--back in New York in 1982. I find a doc fairly easily, at the Wellington Hospital, which in the two-tiered health-care system in England seems to me to treat the moneyed tier . . . (tea and biscuits in the lobby while we wait).

       Looking back, I can say that both Dr. Wong and I get home that night thinking I have a case of colitis. Turns out we were wrong. We've all heard of mad cow disease--mad colon disease, maybe?

THE DIAGNOSIS [Part I]

INTERIOR: Master bedroom of our Boulder, Colorado, home, focus on phone on nightstand next to bed.

EXTERIOR: Wickedly bright sunshine, some clouds over the Flatirons and foothills.

CUE SOUND: Phone rings.

"Hello."

"Mr. Pesmen?"

"Yes. . ."

This is my doctor, my gastroenterologist, I can tell, on the line.

"Mr. Pesmen . . ." (Uh-oh, he's said my name twice in five seconds; not a good sign when you've been waiting for five hours for a phone call from someone who has been waiting for results from the pathology lab. . . .)

"I've got some bad news. . . ."

SYNOPSIS: This is no screenplay; this is not the theater. This is (my) real life. It has just been threatened. . . .

SKATING AWAY [PART I]

       For some reason, after I hang up with the doctor, I decide to go ahead and go ice-skating, just like I'd planned, with my friend Tom and his daughter in downtown Boulder. Call it denial, shock, incomprehension. For now, I still feel strong, I don't want to call or talk to anyone. . . . Paula isn't home . . . maybe being on the ice will somehow soothe me. I am lost, but head downtown with my skates in my hands. I park the car, lock up, and hear tinny speakers blaring "Jingle Bells." Three days till Christmas. . . .

THE DIAGNOSIS [Part II]

       SCENE: Master bedroom, still. "It turns out they found some cancer cells in there," the doctor says of the pathologist. "I am really sorry."

       I am stunned but do not cry. Instead, my body convulses slightly. Sitting on my bed, hunched over the phone, I feel as if I've just been in a minor car wreck . . . but all's . . . almost . . . okay. My journalistic instincts take over and I start taking notes furiously . . . "adenocarcinoma . . . second opinion . . . final pathology report after the weekend . . . need to get you to a good surgeon . . . don't know the stage yet . . . after surgery you'll know more . . .-really sorry to give you this news. . . ."

       Merry Christmas.

SYNOPSIS: Forget the car wreck. Feels like I have been hit by a train and have entered another world. I am now a cancer patient. December 22, 2000.

Article first published in Esquire May 2001 | Volume 135 No.5 also availiable on the Esquire website at http://www.esquire.com/features/ESQ0501-MAY_CANCER_rev_2