Web Exclusive: Shadow of the Clock
By Steve Reynolds, special correspondent
As I write this, it is three years exactly since my diagnosis. I had surgery the week before Thanksgiving. St Vincent’s in Manhattan, my throat dissected. I had stitches and feeding and breathing tubes. The chill from the window blew into the room. My cheap little rag gown. St Vincent’s was broke.
Ohio State played Michigan; I watched it in a narcotic haze. Blue and yellow guys and silver and red guys ran into each other. Why you? Why me? I didn’t smoke.
One thing I will say – cancer is a long battle. The thing was a beginning, a process I am still in. People ask how I’m doing. There is pain, stiffness from the surgery, dry mouth, difficulty swallowing and chewing. I am through my two-year check up; I do not have recurrence, but it’s all measured against the five-year window. I have fatigue and sometimes despair at the creeping way the stiffness and pain comes to me every day.
I continue to follow the cancer and my strain of the disease. The HPV is back in splotch in the back of throat. I’ve been walking around with this for a few months. It’s benign, I’m told. I can’t find the time to get it removed. Will it come back? What if I drink? When will it reoccur? I am always aware, the shadow of the clock. I clean my hands a lot.
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This past month my kid sister died. My sister was 13 months younger than me, Irish twins. I was in a cab taking Tynan to a play date on Columbus Day, some cop called my cell phone. Our son is now six, he is only now starting to have memories and recollections. If recurrence happens, what will he remember? Will he ever know how he helped me get through the worst year of my life?
We have a memorial for my sister. It is Halloween, all souls eve. The Yankees are in the World Series. My job is to eulogize my sister before 200 people in a chapel, her daughters, our parents. What about my parents? I know what her death is doing to them and to my mother, who is only 70. Will she bury two of her three children?
Tynan goes trick or treating as a zombie in N.Y. Mets uniform “to bring them back from the dead,” he says.
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I am asked to participate at ASTRO by Maura Gillison. I am honored to even be considered. What will I say? How is my tiny life worthy? I talked to the guy from Forbes. “She’s Babe Ruth,” I said, “listen to her.”
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So here I am, working – working my ass off, in fact. Flying – probably 20,000 miles last September. Europe, Seattle, Brazil, back to Europe. Bunch of guys on phones talking people into things. The pace is about what it was when I got sick. First I got shingles – shingles – as a 40-something, then I got cancer. Any connection? Dr. Gillison says marijuana is an indicator. How far back does it all go? Everything coils backward and forward together for me, now. My son goes to school, I fly around, my nieces will meet and marry. Someone else will get throat cancer. Unceasing coils, all connected, in the shadow of the clock.
Reynolds is executive vice president and managing director of Access Markets International (AMI) Partners Inc and an HPV-related-cancer survivor. He will be giving the keynote address at 8:00 a.m. on February 26, 2010, at the Multidisciplinary Head and Neck Cancer Symposium taking place February 25-27, 2010, at the Sheraton Wild Horse Pass Resort and Spa in Chandler, Ariz.