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Sunday, September 16, 2001
By Matthew McGough
My big brother Michael had business in New York City this summer and invited me along. We had a wonderful time. We dined in many of the Big Apple's colorful restaurants, including Mike's favorite breakfast spot, a not-too-fancy diner called The Flame. We saw four shows. We even played tourist, taking a double-decker bus tour of Manhattan.
It was from the open upper deck of that big red bus that I finally got an upclose view of the twin towers of the World Trade Center, which I snapped at a severe angle with my disposable tourist camera, making them appear even taller in the pocket photo album. It never occurred to us that we were looking at them for the last time.
On Tuesday, I was glued to the nonstop TV coverage of the attack, despite my profound need for sleep. Having just started chemotherapy again the week before, I was easily fatigued by the smallest effort, such as getting my middle school-aged son Max off to school. Soon, I abandoned the bedroom along with all pretense of resting and moved to the larger screen in the family room, with my pup, Molly, aka Chemo the Wonder Dog, who has been with me since my life changed irrevocably almost three years ago.
As I watched the news anchors struggling to cope with the devastation, I was struck by the similarities in my own life. I, too, have had to fend off sneak attacks from an enemy that doesn't play by the rules. I have colon cancer.
In the nearly three years since a visit to the hospital for severe abdominal cramps turned into emergency surgery, I have had numerous operations, several bouts of systemic therapy, even radiation. Like the flustered folks on TV, I never saw it coming.
Months after multiple hospital stays ("Hey, how you doing, Buddy?!" my pal from housekeeping says when he sees me in the halls at UPMC St. Margaret), the invisible enemy struck again, with little warning. The cancer came back in a most unexpected place, as small seed tumors hidden among the layers of scar tissue in my abdominal wall blossomed into uncomfortable lumps in my gut.
We began the battle anew: more bloodwork, more CT scans, more surgery, more chemo. My current therapy regimen, in which I get to walk around attached to a boom-box-sized pump for 24 hours once a week, is in response to a third recurrence. Like the folks in New York, Washington and Somerset, I have a terrific support team -- from my dear wife and family to the wonderful doctors, nurses and technicians who have come to my rescue with each "attack."
And like the survivors of the terrorist attacks, I have found new resolve in the face of this unwarranted aggression: I intend to fight back, to search out the culprits and deliver unto them the appropriate consequences. I've come to realize that my illness can serve, unexpectedly, as a way to bring people together, united against a common enemy, declaring that we will not go down easy.
In this battle, as in the greater one now before the American people and their allies the world over, it is important to not give up. As has been stated eloquently by our local, state and national leaders, we as Americans must put our best foot forward, showing this unseen enemy that we will not tolerate such cowardly affronts to our way of life.
Hey, that's pretty much my message, too: Listen up, you evil little tumors, you cowardly cancer cells, I'm not giving up without a fight, and I've got allies who are going to join me in my efforts to beat you back, and I'm going to go on living my life.
Of course, I know better than most that while life goes on, it will never be quite the same again. I was reminded of this the other night, as I helped my son get clothes out for the next day of school. There was the T-shirt I'd just brought him from New York's Museum of Natural History, the one with the cartoon pterosaurs buzzing around the World Trade Center towers.
Will he ever be able to wear that shirt again? Of course, he will. It was a gift, a reminder that his dad loves him. And now it will mean even more. It will mean that even though things have changed, life goes on.
Matthew McGough lives in O'Hara.
Firefighter raise the flag in the wreckage of the World Trade Center. (Thomas E. Franklin, Associated Press)