Different Slants

Robert M. Katzman’s Amazing Story:  http://www.differentslants.com/?p=355

© December 4, 2013

A person I met at neighborhood gathering in early December this year asked me how my store was doing, in Skokie, Illinois. The actual answer would be: “Terrible!” like so many thousands of small businesses across America. But I didn’t say that. I said something else, that it really didn’t matter to me how successful my store was in the larger picture of my life.  She looked quizzical.

I briefly explained. She seemed surprised by my response, but then told me to write about it, that it might mean something to people who need hope. I hadn’t planned on doing that.  But since I have respect for Frances Roehm, who is an Online Librarian for the Skokie Library, and I consider her a friend, I told her I would do that, because she asked me. My story has nothing to do with Christmas, despite the date of it. The meaning of it is within me, all year, every year.

December 20^th is the 45^th anniversary of when I had major cancer surgery in 1968, during my freshman year at the University of Illinois.  A doctor at St. Francis Hospital in Evanston, Danely Slaughter, removed most of my left jaw.  In the ICU, he came in to check on teenaged me to see how I was doing.  He was a famous surgeon, though I didn’t know that at the time.  He told me he felt 95% sure he had removed all of the malignancy.  I responded, slowly, unhappily, in the cool room full of blinking lights and beeping noises with tubes coming out of me and lumpy bandages covering most of my face, “Why not 100%?”

He replied, a bit impatiently, that he felt 95% was close enough.  Also, he probably didn’t want some young whippersnapper questioning his competence.  Evidently, he was correct.  The surgeon died two years later in 1970 from a heart attack, but at least not from cancer. Though I suspect that difference didn’t give him much satisfaction at the time.  I discovered his obituary by chance while reading the Chicago Sun-Times.  I think about that.  I am 63 today, maybe the same general age he was at his death.  I am 95% sure of that.  Dr. Slaughter might say that my calculated guess was “close enough”.

While many surgeries followed, that is not what this reflection is about. Having cancer at eighteen changes a person’s perspective on everything.  What else is on an equal plane of catastrophic possibilities in a person’s life?

Nothing.

I left college “couldn’t see the point of it any more”and opened a series of businesses (Bob’s Newsstands (5 stores, 55 employees at its 1983 peak), a literary bookstore, a kosher delicatessen, a periodical distribution trucking company, a foreign language bookstore, a collectible magazine store and now I’m the author of five self-published non-fiction books about my strange life) none of which I knew anything about, because the risk of failure couldn’t measure up to a much worse thing that had already happened. Some of them were quite successful.

Perhaps having no fear of failure unleashes a person’s determination and creativity.  Helps them see the big picture more clearly.  But how can I know that?  I have nothing to compare it to, do I?

I was drafted exactly one year to the day from the surgery, December 20^th, 1969, and then immediately rejected because of what the surgery took away.  The United States Army wants their soldiers complete, at least to start out with, I guess.  But they didn’t let me go completely. Over a four-year period I had four different classifications, not receiving a 4-F until 1972.  But they never saw me again and no one called me. They have their mysterious ways.  During that same period I had an unsuccessful transplant operation, but they never knew about that. I…assume.

Time went by.  I tried to rationalize the meaning of things over and over.  Why am I here? Is survival arbitrary? If there was no Divine Intervention–and why would there be?–what does a person do with the rest of their life that will motivate them? Would I be able to sustain a long-term relationship?  Why have kids if the possibility of death from a resurgent cancer was always there, lurking in the shadows, ready to grab me whenever, wherever?  If I fell in love, would it be fair to marry someone?

To give this a perspective that may be easier for a stranger reading this story to be able to understand how I felt, my father was working for The Equitable Life Insurance Company on Michigan Avenue across the street from the Wrigley Building.  New insurance agents, and he was one at the age of fifty-six, were supposed to go out and sell insurance to anyone they met, especially relatives. He asked me and I said ok.  I was happy to help him.

But then I was rejected, at 18, as a bad risk and was informed that I was “rated” for five years. Rated?  My father explained to me, in tears, that it meant that I was not expected to survive five years after the cancer surgery and the insurance company didn’t want to sign up a guy that they felt was going to be an immediate payout.  What would such a grimly matter-of-fact explanation do to you if you heard it like that? Plan a career?

But I did fall in love.  I married an eighteen-year-old girl when I was twenty-one and we had a child, a daughter.  Maybe I was too young, though. Perhaps I was concerned about wasting time.  A “do it while you can” mentality.  Not so wise, in retrospect. The marriage wasn’t successful–except for the birth of a wonderful beautiful first child– and I met another person, a woman this time.  We were both twenty-five, married at twenty-seven and had three children, two of them parents themselves now, as is my first daughter.  Four grandchildren.  Imagine that? I suggested to all of them to wait until they were twenty-eight to marry. They did.

We are still together and still married thirty-eight years later.  Still, the woman took a risk, didn’t she?  Lucky for me.  I do hope lucky for her, too.

My fourth child is seventeen now.  We adopted her when we were both forty-six.  Completely crazy, if a person thinks about it, under the circumstances.  This was 14 years after a second transplant operation, more or less successful.  Less, really.  I get to see the results every day.

While all this was happening, people were dying all around me.  My grandparents, parents, my aunts and uncles, a younger cousin and my older sister. Many had cancer, including my sister, Bonnie. Now I’m the older brother because for me, time kept going.

Adopt a child?  A child actually born on 9/11?  Maybe not such a good omen. Why do that?

Because my good wife wanted another child and who was I to say no?  Mister Bad-Risk-Husband now on the brink of social security?  Will I live to meet my last child’s children, too, especially if she also decides to marry at twenty-eight– eleven years from now–when I’d be seventy-four?  Fifty-six years after my traumatic teenaged surgery?

Cancer in my rear-view mirror.  Is it gaining on me, or am I leaving it behind?

How can I possibly know?

But after more than 20,000 unexpected tomorrows, I still believe there will be more.

Maybe.

There’s always hope.

Afterword

A smart person in the Skokie Library reference department, Gary Gustin, tracked down the information on Dr. Danely Phillip Slaughter which I was unable to unearth for 43 years.

Turns out, Dr Slaughter was born in 1911 and died April 11^th, 1970, at 59.  So young. He did my surgery when he was 57 and amazingly, I have managed to live longer than man who saved my life, too. I do hope I have somehow helped or inspired the many people who have helped me, all along my way.  That would help me make sense of this very odd life. Objectively, I’m a very lucky man.

Dear Dr. Slaughter, forty-five years later, and wherever you may be… I still remember you.

Thank you.

(Added October 8, 2017): As many already know, my beloved Joy died on Mother’s Day, May 14th this year, at 66. We had 42 years together. Not enough. I am now 67. Amazing.

My 38th operation on my left shoulder will be on December 8th. I am left-handed, so maybe no writing for a while. And yes, I did assume it would be coming eventually, because one side of your body mirror’s the other.)

(Added December 20, 2020): Well, still here. 800 days after Joy died, I met Nancy, a beautiful, smart, funny, creative woman, a year ago on 11/23/19. She must be pretty remarkable to put up with a strange cat like me. Oh, the 41st surgery was in August 2020.

After all the shots are given, and Canada reopens, we plan to drive to the Gaspe Peninsula in Quebec–one of the coolest places in North America you never heard of. And now the “Cursed Kid” is 70 years old! Damn.

What’s the point? The point is to keep living and having something to look forward to. By the way, Nancy and I decided we loved each other. What’s the odds of that? Jeez…

One more thing, five days before Christmas.

Things being the way they are everywhere on the planet right now, meaning everything is on the line in terms of life and death, think about someone you’ve always loved and never told them so. Be it from 1960 or yesterday, work school or whatever, why not call them up and tell them so. imagine what it might mean to them, and to you, too.

And…what have you got to lose?

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