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would be shaved.
HOW DO YOU CONFRONT YOUR OWN DEATH? SOME-
times I think the blood-brain barrier is more than just physical, it's emotional, too. Maybe there's
a protective mechanism in our psyche that prevents us from accepting our mortality unless we
absolutely have t o.
The night before brain surgery, I thought about death. I searched out my larger values, and I
asked myself, if I was going to die, did I want to do it fighting and clawing or in peaceful
surrender? What sort of character did I hope to show? Was I content with myself and what I had
done with my life so far? I decided that I was essentially a good person, although I could have
been better but at the same time I understood that the cancer didn't care.
I asked myself what I believed. I had never prayed a lot. I hoped hard, I wished hard, but I didn't
pray. I had developed a certain distrust of organized religion growing up, but I felt I had the
capacity to be a spiritual person, and to hold some fervent beliefs. Quite simply, I believed I had
a responsibility to be a good person, and that meant fair, honest, hardworking, and honorable. If
I did that, if I was good to my family, true to my friends, if I gave back to my community or to
some cause, if I wasn't a liar, a cheat, or a thief, then I believed that should be enough. At the
end of the day, if there was indeed some Body or presence standing there to judge me, I hoped I
would be judged on whether I had lived a true life, not on whether I believed in a certain book,
or whether I'd been baptized. If there was indeed a God at the end of my days, I hoped he didn't
say, "But you were never a Christian, so you're going the other way from heaven." If so, I was
going to reply, "You know what? You're right. Fine."
I believed, too, in the doctors and the medicine and the surgeries I believed in that. I believed
in them. A person like Dr. Einhorn, that's someone to believe in, I thought, a person with the
mind to develop an experimental treatment 20 years ago that now could save my life. I believed
in the hard currency of his intelligence and his research.
Beyond that, I had no idea where to draw the line between spiritual belief and science. But I
knew this much: I believed in belief, for its own shining sake. To believe in the face of utter
hopelessness, every article of evidence to the contrary, to ignore apparent catastrophe what
other choice was there? We do it every day, I realized. We are so much stronger than we
imagine, and belief is one of the most valiant and long-lived human characteristics. To believe,
when all along we humans know that nothing can cure the briefness of this life, that there is no
remedy for our basic mortality, that is a form of bravery.
To continue believing in yourself, believing in the doctors, believing in the treatment, believing
in whatever I chose to believe in, that was the most important thing, I decided. It had to be.
Without belief, we would be left with nothing but an overwhelming doom, every single day.
And it will beat you. I didn't fully see, until the cancer, how we fight every day against the
creeping negatives of the world, how we struggle daily against the slow lapping of cynicism.
Dispiritedness and disappointment, these were the real perils of life, not some sudden illness or
cataclysmic millennium doomsday. I knew now why people fear cancer: because it is a slow and
inevitable death, it is the very definition of cynicism and loss of spirit. So, I believed.
WHEN YOU CAN'T REMEMBER SOMETHING, THERE'S A reason why. I've blocked out
much of what I thought and felt the morning of my brain surgery, but one thing I remember
clearly is the date, October 25th, because when it was over I was so glad to be alive. My mother
and Och and Bill Stapleton came into my room at 6 A.M. to wake me up, and various nurses
came by to prepare me for the surgery. Before you undergo a brain operation, you have a
memory test. The doctors say, "We're going to tell you three simple words, and try to remember
them for as long as you can." Some brain-tumor patients have lapses and can't remember what
they were told ten minutes ago. If the tumor has affected you, it's the little things that you can't
recall.
A nurse said, "Ball, pin, driveway. At some point we will ask you to repeat these words."
It could be 30 minutes later, or it could be three hours, but I would be asked for them
eventually, and if I forgot, that would mean big trouble. I didn't want anyone to think I had a
problem I was still trying to prove I wasn't really as sick as the medical experts thought. I was
determined to remember those words, so they were all I thought about for several minutes: Ball,
pin, driveway. Ball, pin, driveway.
A half hour later a doctor returned and asked me for the words.
"Ball, pin, driveway," I said, confidently.
It was time to go to surgery. I was wheeled down the hall, with my mother walking part of the
way, until we turned into the surgical room, where a team of masked nurses and doctors was
waiting for me. They propped me up on the operating table, as the anesthesiologist began the
job of administering the knockout punch.
For some reason, I felt chatty.
"Did you guys ever see the movie Malice?" I asked.
A nurse shook her head.
Enthusiastically, I launched into a summary of the plot: Alec Baldwin plays this gifted but
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