It starts with the PSA blood test. If it rises above 4, you might have prostate cancer. The next diagnostic step is a digital rectal exam. Then you move on to an MRI and probably a biopsy, where they take a dozen samples from around the prostate. Pathology looks at the tissue samples and delivers a Gleason verdict.
In her introduction to The Cancer Journals (1980), Audre Lorde, who had just gone through a mastectomy for breast cancer, sets out what she is going to talk about in her book: “the travesty of prosthesis, the pain of amputation, the function of cancer in a profit economy, my confrontation with mortality, the strength of women loving, and the power and rewards of self-conscious living.”
First, a confession. Even though I was an English major years ago, I haven’t read much fiction after the shock of my first wife’s unexpected death in her forties twenty years ago, and this includes the works of John Updike. Only the directness of nonfiction and poetry have been able to penetrate the shell of reality.
I don’t know much about Updike’s cancer. Updike didn’t, either. He knew he had cancer for only one month before he died. I found half a dozen poems in his last poetry book, Endpoint and Other Poems (2009), published after his death. That’s a small amount of material to form any conclusions. The other poems in this collection were written over a number of years.
I have a love/hate relationship with the BMI. Is “hate” too strong a word? There is no love. At every meeting with my oncologist, the notice flashes on the screen – “You’re still overweight, Bozo!”
So I do seriously dislike the BMI because I’m never in the good zone. I diet, exercise, skimp, and have said “no” to dessert so often that I feel guilty whenever I actually eat one.
