(RNS) — The news of President Biden’s prostate cancer diagnosis hit me hard. Last December, I discovered I have a particularly aggressive strain of prostate cancer — only slightly less aggressive and slightly less advanced than Biden’s. Several weeks ago, I had surgery for the removal of the diseased gland and surrounding tissue. I am still recovering, but the prognosis is good.
Not being a former president, I had to wait a few agonizing weeks for the biopsy that showed aggressive cancer and tests that would let me know if the cancer had metastasized. A full body “PET” scan indicated the cancer, while present outside the prostate, had not spread to lymph nodes or bones, increasing my odds considerably of living a full life and, as urologists like to say, “dying of something else.”
I’d be delighted to die of “something else,” but the main thing is that it be “some time else.” Preferably, let “something else” be a malady that hasn’t been discovered yet, say, “Moses-Nebo Disease,” which only infects people over 120 who have a thing for hitting rocks and smashing tablets.
I don’t mean to make light of my diagnosis. Admittedly, though, it’s hard to think of a gland that generates more giggles than the prostate — especially how it’s examined. As one comic remarked, “Now I know what it feels like to be a Muppet.” Gallows humor is a valued coping mechanism for Jews — and I recommend it highly to lighten the burden of existential dread.
To be honest, I’ve spent so much of my life visiting hospitals and cemeteries that perhaps I’ve become desensitized to the kind of life-and-death challenge I’m now confronting.
Or, to put it more positively, I’ve gained perspective, and maybe some hope, from seeing illness and death as an integral part of being fully alive.
But suffice to say, I’ve had my down moments during this journey, particularly when the disquieting biopsy results were placed in my patient portal with no explanation, leaving me to Google my way into a frenzy, assuming the worst.
And after the surgery, dealing with a catheter for 10 days was not fun.
Although prostate is among the most treatable cancers, as long as it is contained, it’s still cancer, and there are many unknowns. Even if the surgeon gets it all, as mine claims he did, it could well return. That remains a distinct possibility for me, so I hesitate to call myself a “survivor,” though I technically am.
A beloved congregant who eventually succumbed to lung cancer wrote this after he passed a major milestone of 11 years following his original diagnosis:
One thing you accept as a cancer survivor is the realization you can never return to life as it was before the cancer diagnosis. Now, I am Richard with lung cancer. I can never go back to being just Richard again. But being a cancer survivor doesn’t have to define my life. I choose to live a little each day than die a little each day. In the book, Seabiscuit, Laura Hillenbrand wrote, “You do not throw a whole lifetime away because it is banged up a bit.”
I do feel grateful to have enjoyed a relatively healthy life to this point, know that I am very fortunate to have caught the cancer in time (hopefully) and am happy to have had very few symptoms and little discomfort thus far.
I’m going public with my diagnosis in part because I feel an obligation to remind men to have regular screenings to detect this disease early on.
I also want to use this space to refocus our attention on President Biden’s recovery and not be distracted by peripheral political issues. It’s really time to put down the cudgels and leave the man alone.
While my life’s work has perhaps desensitized me to the overwhelming presence of mortality, paradoxically it has also brought home on a daily basis the need to make every breath, every moment of life, count. And I’ve come to realize just how numb we’ve all become to the fragility of our mortal existence.
Did 7,010,681 COVID deaths worldwide really shock us? Have we become anesthetized to the pain and the beauty, the bitter and the sweet? Have we simply forgotten how precious life is?
When I awoke from my surgery, I turned my attention to two blessings from the daily morning liturgy — passages from the same page of the Talmud (Berachot 60b) that have never been more relevant for me.
The first thanks the Source of Life for renewing my life’s breath, my “neshama.”
In Jewish mystical literature, God can be perceived as the life force embodied in every breath. God also breathes life into us just as the blower shapes glass — that divine breath is called “neshama.” That breath then takes a more human form in our bodies, invigorating us with life.
The breath we then exhale, projecting it back out into the world, is called “nefesh.” The give and take of God’s breath and our own, neshama and nefesh, bespeak a very dynamic way of being human.
For we really aren’t human beings. We are human becomings. We are constantly evolving, growing and connecting to everything around us. There’s a little bit of each of us in that plankton and in that tree, and certainly in one another, and in every human being on this planet.
While in surgery, I had a tube down my throat and my breathing was regulated by human beings. But at the moment I came to, this primal human act became, once again, a partnership between myself and God. In saying this prayer, I reacquired control over my humanity.
The other blessing I recited when I awoke focuses not on the soul, but the body, marveling specifically at the miracle of our internal plumbing, with all its exquisite complexity. The Talmud states:
Upon exiting (the bathroom upon awakening), one says:
Blessed …Who formed man in wisdom,
and created many orifices and cavities.
It is revealed and known before the throne of Your glory
that were one of them to be ruptured or blocked, it would be impossible to survive and stand before You.
My innards have taken a hit and have needed some assistance, divine and human, in order to function, but the process of healing is a miracle.
Rabbi Joshua Hammerman. (Courtesy photo)
To President Biden I say, let the healing begin!
(Rabbi Joshua Hammerman is the author of “Mensch-Marks: Life Lessons of a Human Rabbi” and “Embracing Auschwitz: Forging a Vibrant, Life-Affirming Judaism That Takes the Holocaust Seriously.” See more of his writing at his Substack page, “In This Moment.” The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of RNS.)
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