PART ONE
DIA~i~IOSIS
IT IS APPROPRIATE that an odyssey about cancer--the dis-
case being the mystery that it ismshould begin on a ludicrous note.
In the summer of I976 my friend Todd Strasser and I had just moved
M
into an apartment on anhattan s Upper West Side. Todd was a
quick-witted would-be novelist， and I was a reporter covering the
suburban towns of northern New Jersey for The Record in Hack-
cnsack. We had met the previous year as reporters in upstate New
York for the Middletown Times Herald-Record， and now we were
preparing to conquer the publishing and journalism worlds of New
York City. Our financial resources were limited， so we jumped at
thc opportunity when Todd s aunt on Long Island bought a new
couch and offered us her old one if we could haul it away. One Sat-
urday we drove to Long Island， tied the couch to the roof of my old
Volvo， and stopped for dinner at my parents apartment in the Fresh
Meadows section of Queens.
To placate my mother I had also agreed to visit her doctor in Fresh
Meadows. lhad discovered a golf-ball-sized lump growing under
my right arm. I thought the lump was peculiar， like nothing I had
ever seen before， but at first gave it hardly a second thought. I be-
licved， and I was at least partly correct， that the lump was a swollen
gland fighting off a minor infection. I sensed that people found be-
nign lumps on their bodies as often as they found lumps in their oat-
meal. But the overriding factor in my decision to ignore it was that
[ didn t feel sick and I didn t want to believe that I was sick. Except
for routine childhood illnesses and an occasional common cold， I
had always enjoyed perfect health. Only two months earlier I had
passed a medical physical for my reporting job.
\"I m not worried about it，\" I told Todd. \"It s just an infection.\"
Todd agreed. \"You re right. It s probably nothing. But you
should get it checked out if it gets any worse.\"
When I phoned my mother and described the lump， she was more
emphatic. (My mother is the quintessential Jewish mother. When
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