by Michael Vuolo
NARRATION: My own bout with CANCERPHOBIA lasted for more than a year in the late 1990s, before I bought a new dictionary and so before I had a word for my obsession. I remember precisely how it started ... with a dull eye pain that lingered after a case of conjunctivitis - a pain I somehow became convinced meant I had brain cancer. And so, I had a series of MRIs and various scans and tests and they all revealed nothing - nothing my doctors could see anyway, I thought. So I changed my focus.
I spent the next several months trying to convince my very patient, very deadpan urologist, Dr. Das, that I had testicular cancer. I thought I felt a lump and so insisted on an ultrasound. I did my own research and knew that blood samples show an elevated level of two specific proteins in men with testicular cancer and so demanded a blood test. I was having trouble breathing and so assumed the cancer had spread to my lungs.
These new tests again all came back negative ... but I was persistent. Sitting in his office one day, chatting about my perceived condition, I managed to pull Dr. Das, for a few brief moments, into my own tortured space of unreason. He finally gave me what I needed ... what I wanted. He spoke to me as if ... I had cancer ... while he talked I was strangely calm. I was ... I think ... relieved.
He told me I would have chemotherapy, but that first one of my testicles would be
surgically removed. He assured me and I was happy to hear that I would continue to function normally and he talked about a prosthetic...
"Wait ... we are getting way ahead of ourselves here," he said, interrupting himself. Dr. Das suddenly seemed disappointed ... in both of us ... he left the room.
I sat there alone for a few minutes and felt ... guilty ... guilty that I had taken this man in a white lab coat out of the fact-driven arena of medicine and into my own crowded mind ... into the realm of fantasy and indulgence. In this moment ... I knew I had a problem. Guilt and clarity, though, are quickly subsumed by compulsion. I soon moved on to prostate cancer, and when that didn't pan out I made an appointment with a dermatologist. Cancerphobia was now dominating my life ... and destroying my relationship.
I was dating Alicia at the time. At first, she wrote letters on my behalf to world-renowned doctors, she did research on the Internet, she was as caring and proactive a girlfriend as one could hope for ... until ... she came one evening to my apartment and found a brief note that read: Went to doctor to have mole checked. Alicia says now ... that with those seven words I had depleted what was left of her energy ... and her concern.
TAPE: ALICIA: I do remember this, I remember reaching a point where I was no longer sympathetic and I no longer felt sympathetic ... I just felt angry.
NARRATION: Months after we had broken up ... I too reached that point. I decided in an instant that my life would no longer be defined by a preoccupation with my death. So I said good-bye to all my many doctors ... Das and Mitkoff ... Smith and Spiro and Lieberman and others. I canceled my health coverage ... cut up my insurance card and quit the scene cold turkey. I've been cancerphobia-free for four years now. But that eye pain ... the one that started it all ... never completely went away ... and every once in a while I wonder if ... maybe ... I'm simply in remission. For Columbia Radio News ... I'm Michael Vuolo.