Bad luck and good luck

It was 2008 when I was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. It was a sinking feeling, the idea that I wasn’t even 50 and my life might already be coming to an end. I had a hard time speaking when I tried to tell my brothers and sisters about it. Jill had to finish my words.

This felt like bad luck. Really bad luck. Cancer? Me? I entered a course of radiation: five times a week for about three weeks. It burned. But you know what? It wasn’t that bad. I had a friend who had the same diagnosis around the same time. Jeff got radiation, too. But he also got chemotherapy. And stem cell transplants. Weeks in a hospital isolation room while his decimated immune system rebounded.

Myself, I went to my radiation treatments in the hospital basement and then stopped at Starbucks on my way to back to work. Even when the lymphoma came back 10 years later and required another dozen blasts of radiation, I thought, “This isn’t too bad. If I only have to do this once every decade, I can suffer that, no problem.” I told my friends that I actually felt lucky. If they put you up against a wall and said, “Son, we have good news and bad news. The bad news is we have to give you cancer. The good news is that YOU get to pick the kind.” 

All told, I would pick this type. It was something I could live with, something I could handle. In a way, I felt lucky that I had this type of cancer and not another kind — say, a glioblastoma like my Aunt Karen had, or the leukemia that took my friend Michelle. 

***
The Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh told a story about good luck and bad luck, retold from a Chinese parable dating to the 2nd century BCE. Found in a collection of essays called the Huainanzi, the parable is often referred to as "The Old Man Lost His Horse" — or "塞翁失馬" (Sāi Wēng Shī Mǎ). 

In this parable, a farmer’s horse has run away. The people of the village consoled him: “Oh, such bad luck.” The following day, his horse returned… but trailing two other horses, which added to the farmer’s prosperity. “What good fortune!” his friends exclaimed. 

The next day, the farmer’s son was riding one of the horses when he was thrown from the saddle and broke his leg. “How unfortunate,” the villagers said in sympathy. 

Not long after, war broke out and young men from the village were being conscripted. All the men were drafted, excepting the farmer’s son with his broken leg. This broken leg, the villagers now claimed, was actually “good luck.”

***

Earlier this year while showering, I felt something new, something different on the side of my neck. It was barely palpable, but something was in there. Over the past 16 years, bathing has not been simply about good hygiene. With a history of “Lymph Nodes Gone Wild,” every shower includes a cursory exam for anything that feels different, feels like a lump, feels like anything that might signal another recurrence of lymphoma. 

I watched this anomaly for not too long… a week, 10 days tops, before calling my lymphoma doc and asking to come in. “I’m feeling something I want you to take a look at,” I told him. As with previous visits of this type, he said, “Don’t tell me exactly where. I don’t want to be biased by your perceptions.” I said, “Good. Above the shoulders. Go…”

He did a close physical exam for several minutes. He stepped back. “I’m not feeling anything that’s giving me concern,” he said. “Okay,” I said, “give me your hand,” and placed his fingers in the vicinity of my concern. 

He pressed more deeply. It wasn’t long before he began to nod slowly. “Yes, I see what you mean.” It was so small, so early, that it was nearly undetectable by a highly skilled and trusted oncologist who knew he was looking for SOMETHING.

This kicked things off. A consult with a head and neck surgeon. Biopsies. Scans. Scheduling surgery. This was not a recurrence of lymphoma, but something new: an oropharyngeal throat cancer requiring a da Vinci surgery to remove a tumor, along with a neck dissection to remove lymph nodes. Two nights in the ICU and six weeks recovery at home. (Short summary: all is well.)

I reflected how I was actually fortunate to have non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma: an indolent, relatively benign variety of cancer, but which tuned my radar to be more aware of subtle changes. This heightened sense of awareness gave me a jump of weeks if not months on a more serious cancer, catching it before it spread further and thus helping me avoid post-surgery radiation or chemo.

It brought to mind that line from the closing pages of Cormac McCarthy’s “No Country for Old Men”: "You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from."

***

In closing his parable about the farmer and his horse, about good luck and bad luck, Thich Nhat Hanh wrote: 

“It is not possible to judge any event as simply fortunate or unfortunate, good or bad, as this age-old story shows. You must travel throughout all of time and space to know the true impact of any event. Every success contains some difficulties, and every failure contributes to increased wisdom or future success. Fortunate and unfortunate, good and bad, these concepts exist only in our mind.”