The question wasn't if there was something drastically wrong with me. Visionary dreams, worsening health, and striking realizations from my Buddhist meditation had already convinced me of that. The question was, “What disease is this?” While engaged in Buddhist meditation or chanting, I tried to focus on overcoming whatever was making me feel so poorly. Like air bubbles rising from the depths of a lake, ideas of danger and dying young came to the surface of my determined prayers. I felt the “fight or flight” reaction switch on within me every few minutes. Not knowing what was actually wrong gripped my every thought with fear and dread. I felt like I was being stalked by an unknown and unseen danger.
Despite my Buddhist training over the previous thirteen years, I could not seem to make any headway into lessening the symptoms of disease that pummeled my body with increasing severity. I was taking nearly a dozen medications. There was powerful pain medication for the debilitating back pain that pounded inside me like Taiko drums, as well as pills for insomnia, itching, muscle relaxation, depression, and more. The pills only made me worse. My wife, Lynn, was convinced that the doctors were poisoning me with so many strong medications, or that the drugs were adversely reacting to each other.
The incident that accelerated the diagnosis occurred after I had taken a shower. I had dried myself and had gotten fully dressed, but when I emerged from the bathroom, I was stricken by a violent chill. My wife and my daughter, Devin, witnessed in shock while my teeth chattered and my whole body shook terribly. I had been having these strong chills for several weeks, but had managed to hide them. My wife called the doctor and pushed him to give us some answers. The possibilities he mentioned were sarcoid, an unknown viral infection, leukemia, or Hodgkin's disease. He did a biopsy and sent it to the Mayo Clinic. The doctor expected the results in a week, but he said he would try to hurry the clinic. Time moved slowly. After two weeks that felt like six months, I had an answer.
My doctor called late at night and gave me the diagnosis. It was the most sobering telephone conversation of my entire life. My first question was, “How long do I have to live?” His explanation of Hodgkin's disease and what I must do instantly humbled me. I was bitterly disappointed more than I was shocked. Lynn was crying. With 50 milligrams of Halcyon already at work, I was too numb to do much of anything except go to bed and deal with the crisis in the morning. Knowing what was wrong with me was actually a comfort. Now I knew the name of the enemy and its name was cancer.
Almost every person I had ever known who had cancer had died a protracted and painful death. No one in our family that I knew of had ever had cancer. Diseases like cancer happened to other people. Shockwaves spread through my family. Some acted like cancer might be contagious, and some didn't know how to talk to me without sounding as if I was on death row.
I never asked myself the common question, “Why me?” On that night I accepted my diagnosis as a call-to-arms. Rather than look to the heavens and bemoan my miserable fate, I looked within and tried to find the courage to show Lynn and Devin, that I was not afraid. More than a decade of Buddhist training had taught me that disease was a symptom of karma and that it was up to me to create value out of something tragic.
The day after I got the news, I sat down with Lynn and went over the details on how my business was run, and how she had to take over if we were to survive. There were no tears. Lynn is a strong woman of German heritage who understood immediately that we all had different roles to play in defeating the obstacles to come. She would need to run the professional resume business and the household. My daughter would need to grow up quickly, watch over me, and help with chores around the house. My function would be to fight and defeat cancer. Lynn knew that strength, determination, and constant effort in our respective roles would be the only possible way to defeat this enemy.
The morning that I left for the hospital, I sat down with Devin in front of our altar and chanted with her for a few minutes. I then looked deeply into her beautiful green eyes and told her the truth of my condition as far as I knew it, and what I expected from her. Devin did not cry or fuss. She only said, “I'll ask the Gohonzon to make you better, Daddy.” As Lynn and I drove the fifty miles to the hospital, nary a word was spoken. Letting me out at the door, she gave me a kiss and went off to work. Because her eyes did not belie her fears, I was able to go into the hospital with the confidence that my family would prevail.
I was admitted to the Hines Veterans' Hospital near Maywood, Illinois, for a diagnostic work-up called “staging,” which would determine how far the cancer had spread. It was so gratifying to have someone finally shed some light on my condition and begin administering care. Within a couple of hours a team of doctors saw me. They said that Hodgkin's disease was treatable and if I was going to get cancer, that was the kind of cancer to get. At first, that news was encouraging.
I soon found out that the oncology ward of a large hospital is no place for the fainthearted. During the first 48 hours of my stay, two of my four roommates died before my eyes. Looking at the reality of the cancer ward, I quickly realized how precarious my situation was. All the wonderful principles and theories I had studied for more than a decade were now being actualized before me, and I had now advanced dangerously close to the front lines of suffering, sickness, and death.
The first person whose death I witnessed was a Korean War veteran named Mr. F. He was a thin and feisty man with a terrific sense of humor. After a check-up for an unrelated medical emergency the doctors discovered he had bladder cancer that had spread to his lymph nodes. He had been given a one-in-three chance of survival. I met him a few days after his surgery, and at the time, Mr. F. was in considerable postoperative pain. He was receiving time-release morphine capsules and oxycodone, so his frame of mind was very relaxed.
I watched as he received his first dose of chemotherapy. The oncology nurse brought in a half dozen syringes of varying sizes. The largest looked like a tube of grape juice. Mr. F. was nervous but hopeful that he would beat the cancer. They hooked him up to an intravenous system to deliver the chemotherapy drugs and in twenty minutes he was finished. Ten minutes after receiving chemotherapy, Mr. F. ran to the bathroom and got sick. From my perspective, he seemed to tolerate it very well. But for the rest of the evening he turned on his side towards the wall with a small basin at his side, riding out the effects. All four men in our room went to bed early.
I was sleeping soundly, when around 2:00 A.M., I woke up to a loud crash. Mr. F. had bolted up from bed and knocked his IV against the wall, pulling all the tubes out of his arm. His last words as he looked at me were, “Help, Chuck!” Falling out of bed onto the hard floor, he convulsed, and then went into cardiac arrest. I ran to the nursing station for help, and in less than one minute, two doctors and several nurses were administering CPR to Mr. F., but they couldn't save him. I sat nervously in bed, watching as he made four or five loud snorting sounds, then went limp on the cold tile floor. It was an ugly but relatively short death.
The staff clergyman was summoned from a sound sleep to perform a brief service over Mr. F.'s body, and then he went back to bed. For the clergyman, death was an everyday occurrence, but for me it was a shock. As I witnessed Mr. F.'s crucial moment, I was repelled by the sudden, thrashing horror of it all. The nurses drew the curtain around him and when the coast was clear, I sneaked over to see his body. Perhaps I was driven by some morbid curiosity of death. Mr. F. looked like a statue. His face was in a grimace, and blue. I stared at his body for several minutes, wondering about death, trying to imagine what was going through his mind as he died. I wondered where he was now and what he was feeling.
When his family came an hour later to collect his things, they were in a state of shock. “What the hell happened?” his wife asked. I couldn't offer any information beyond the fact that he fell out of bed and died. I didn't want to give his heartbroken wife and son all the gruesome details. The son gave me a nearly full box of candies that Mr. F. had been snacking on. When they left, I threw it
in the trash because I was too superstitious to eat a dead man's food. The next day, a janitor fished it out from the rubbish with a smile.
Oncology professionals see the high drama of life and death played out day and night, yet demonstrate an amazing mixture of compassion and detachment. It might be the only way to retain sanity on a cancer ward. Chemotherapy had been mentioned as the probable treatment for me. I detested the way everyone said “chemo” instead of “chemotherapy.” They made the term sound so familiar, so user-friendly. Although I knew very little about chemotherapy, I knew it wasn't user-friendly. It really grated on my nerves when people said “chemo” like they might say “mayo” as in, “Hold the mayo!” The idea of having chemicals with the toxicity of an industrial-strength drain cleaner pumped into my body was not comforting. There was no way I was going to embrace poison as it pumped through my veins. Chemotherapy was serious business. Mr. F. had his first dose and died the same evening.
The very next morning I witnessed the death of Mr. R., a former Chicago policeman who had been admitted the day after I arrived. He was a World War II veteran who was compassionate, but firm. The day he arrived, I introduced him, his two grown children, and his brother to Buddhism and chanting. They were looking for hope anywhere they could find it. A few hours after being admitted, a team of doctors came in and told him that the cancer had spread throughout his body and he might die at any time. Mr. R. didn't show any emotion.
After dinner on the first night, Mr. R. began to burn up with fever and he complained to the nurse of sharp pains in his abdomen and legs. The V. A. hospital wasn't like a private one where the nurses rush in and care for you as if you were at a four-star hotel. He was getting the highest level of care, but there would be no nurses administering nightly sponge baths. He had been examined, fed, he was in a clean bed, and no life-saving medical intervention was needed. I wiped Mr. R. down with a cold compress, and twice lobbied the charge nurse to give him an injection for the pain. Mr. R. kept saying, “Bless you son,” as I cooled his fevered, jaundiced body. I tried to encourage him to repeat the words Nam-myoho-renge-kyo slowly with me to fight his pain. Even though he didn't understand what the words meant, we repeated them for a few minutes until the morphine put him to sleep.
Later that night, he got up to go to the bathroom, and fell to the floor. Mr. R. was a big man who stood over six feet three inches, and weighed more than 250 pounds. It took several nurses to get him back to bed, but it was obvious to me that he was most embarrassed at his condition, and didn't want to burden the staff or call undue attention to himself. I could see the emotional pain he felt at being helpless. After Mr. R. fell asleep, he seemed to be having bad dreams, as if he was fighting off an unseen enemy. “Go away, please, no,” he mumbled. I woke him up and we talked quietly. I got him to chant the mantra a few more times, and he seemed to sleep peacefully for the rest of the night.
The next morning he awoke, smiled at me, and winked. We talked casually until the breakfast cart came in. I looked up from reading and slurping down my corn flakes, to see Mr. R. staring out into space. I called his name, but he just serenely gazed into nowhere. Walking over to him, I looked closely at his eyes, which were fixed and dilated. I waved my hand before his face thinking he was only lost in thought. There was no response. Mr. R. had died with a placid smile on his face.
At his moment of death, Mr. R. was peaceful and dignified. His death was as graceful as falling asleep for a much-needed nap. I was most impressed with the quiet dignity that his body manifested at the final moment, as if he had just heard his favorite song. Could one's brief connection with the Mystic Law of Nam-myoho-renge-kyo produce such a startling result? I was shaken to the core of my being. Death and the moment of death were mysterious and thought provoking. Would that person join into the sleep of death with peace and manifest a dignified expression, or would they enter death thrashing and in agonizing pain? The many experiences and writings that I had studied regarding the link between the Mystic Law and its effect on elevating a person's dominant life condition at the moment of death was now being supported by firsthand evidence. I sensed that I was being prepared for a big lesson about the true nature of life and death, in light of my Buddhist studies.
I had little time to mourn my newly fallen friends. Life's compelling demonstration of karmic reward and retribution was a vivid demonstration of the fragile nature of existence. I must have created some very nasty karma to end up as a young man suffering from a deadly cancer that was spreading throughout my body. Another part of my thoughts reflected on how severe reality was for other people. In no way was I unique. There were one hundred beds on my floor alone, with many people ready to die at any moment. Only a few short months before I had been looking to the future and now I wasn't sure that I had one. Life seemed such a paradox. I could do nothing but turn to my beliefs and fight.
From the moment I had fallen ill, I began to repeat Nam-myoho-renge-kyo many hours a day, with the hope that I could overcome cancer and live a long, meaningful life. Chanting in the hospital proved to be tricky. I didn't want to invade the privacy of my neighbors. As a Buddhist, it would not have been appropriate for me to go to the hospital chapel and chant my mantra to a cross or statue of Jesus Christ. My best place was the infrequently used patient shower room, where I could chant at whatever volume I liked while staring at a tile wall. When I couldn't chant in the shower room, I just drew the curtains around my bed, sat up straight, Native American style, and chanted in a whisper.
After witnessing two sudden deaths and hearing the groans and screams that occasionally cut through the thin walls and the silence of night throughout the cancer ward, I vowed to chant from dawn to dusk if necessary to change my bad karma into good fortune. Despite the dire prospects that loomed before me, I feared more for Lynn and Devin than I did for myself. The pain that cancer had caused my family filled me with anger and frustration. But it was that primordial soup of unrequited emotion, coupled with the survival instinct, that brought out the warrior within. I vowed to conquer cancer.
LESSONS
Rather than languishing in my sick bed, I took it upon myself to wander the vast cancer ward of Hines Hospital. It was immediately apparent that many people were far sicker than I was. I used my training in faith gained through my thirteen-year association with the American branch of the Buddhist lay organization Soka Gakkai International, to encourage other people. That training included reaching out to others, despite one's own difficult situation. Based on the knowledge that life is eternal, the Bodhisattva gives his or her full energy for the salvation and benefit of others, without regard for his or her own life. Such altruistic attitudes are the desired result of Buddhist practice. To look beyond your own problems and display mercy and compassion for others despite your own difficulties is the epitome of human behavior. It was obvious that such behavior, resulting from years of Buddhist training, would prove invaluable in my personal fight against cancer and how I could influence others to do the same.
Although discouraged by the rapid deterioration of my own health and the somber words of my doctors, I found value in visiting as many patients as I could. Many were old and alone with no family members to bring them comfort. I discovered that the simple act of holding a person's hand in their final moments was more valuable to them than mountains of gold.
One very old man was strapped to the bed, calling out his wife's name at the top of his lungs. He would shout for his beloved “Rose” until the nurses had enough, finally giving him an injection to calm him down and induce sleep. After hearing his plaintive cries for several nights, I asked permission to sit with the old man.
When he looked at me, he seemed surprised that someone other than a nurse or doctor was beside his bed. Turning away, he called out for his wife. I touched his hand and recited Nam-myoho-renge-kyo in my most melodious voice. The old man became silent and stared at me in amazement, seeming to really enjoy what I was doing. In my heart I prayed for mercy for this complete strange
r. Next I recited a chapter from the Lotus Sutra in a slow and rhythmic voice. His face was childlike and awestruck.
I spent only a short time with that veteran, but when I started to leave, despite being restrained, he tried to grab my hand. I took hold of him and looked deeply into his eyes, trying to reassure him that he was not alone. That night the old man was oddly silent. During the night he died. It was a merciful blessing for someone with metastatic prostate cancer.
It seemed as if everyone I met and everything I observed had a purpose. Life was exposing its impermanence to me for the first time with all its beauty and tragedy. But nothing could prepare me for the experience of the fifth night. I had stopped at the TV room to chat with a woman and her daughter. Their loved one, Mr. G., lay moaning loudly in the room directly across from the nursing station. They told me that Mr. G. had bone cancer and there was no possible hope of recovery. They were frustrated because the doctors couldn't do anything to save him or even relieve his intractable pain. They were particularly discouraged because all the clergy could do was tell them God's purpose was not easy to understand. They were offered no hope.
Mr. G. had been hospitalized in isolation for about a month, screaming in agony as the disease progressed. There were no more tears left in either his wife or daughter. He was getting a large injection of morphine every four hours, but the pain continued to worsen. He was in agony during the day, but the night was a living hell. Oddly, I had somehow tuned out this man's sobbing moans. Now that I listened, I could hear the sound of hell in his cries. It was as though he was being hacked to pieces with a machete. I found out that he was a highly decorated World War II hero who had fought in the South Pacific and had been a prisoner of war.
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