We were in the St. Petersburg performances of Damn Yankees when I discovered an inch sore on the left side of my neck. I went to my chiropractor, who sent me to my general practitioner doctor, who immediately rushed me to Tampa General Hospital to see an oncologist.
The oncologist, this could only happen in real life, was dating a woman in the cast of Damn Yankees. After several tests in cold metal rooms, the doctor told me it was cancer in my left lymph node. "Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma occurs when your lymphocytes continue to grow and divide. This oversupply of these cells' crowds into your lymph nodes, causing them to swell.”
Hoping to be lighthearted, I asked him, “So. What are my chances?”
He told me, stone-faced, “50-50.”
“Okay, Lary, we’re going to attempt to shrink the tumor with radiation. You’ll do 52 treatments, one each day. After that, we wait for five weeks before we can do a radical neck dissection…”
“Let’s not do anything radical, Doc.” One more tries at mirth.
No smile. “We’ll do a radical neck dissection to, we hope, get the whole tumor.”
The hospital was in Tampa, 45 miles northeast of our apartment in Bradenton. Linda was forced to drive me a round trip to Tampa, 52 days in a row because I couldn’t drive because of the radiation.
At night, the theater van drove the show cast to St. Petersburg each day for the performances of Damn Yankees. The radiation tired me. I got into my costume, did my make-up, and sat in a folding chair in the hallway next to the stage, my head against the wall, my eyes closed. A sweet actress named Julie would come and wake me for each entrance. Notably, my wife Linda left me alone. After each scene, I would resume my position in the folding chair and then wake for the curtain call.
But a few weeks later, the worst side effect happened: My taste buds were suddenly gone. “I know it’s tough,” the doctor said. “But they’ll come back eventually.”
“It’s excruciating,” I told him. “A hamburger tastes like a rolled-up newspaper. Anything sweet tastes like chemicals.”
For 52 days, I got my radiation, went home, and slept on a roll-out couch in the living room. We got in the van to go to the theater, we acted, and got home around midnight.
Finally, after five weeks, the radiation was done, my taste buds came back, and Damn Yankees closed. What I found odd at the time was that Linda treated me as if the cancer was my fault. As if I sustained cancer just to piss her off.
For the next five weeks, I laid on the open couch in the living room, watched TV, and slept. Linda treated me like damaged goods, and we argued often. She still worked in the Golden Apple office. I couldn’t work at all. I tried to be optimistic, but I had a feeling I’d be dead by summer.
Five hours later, I awoke to feel unspeakably cold with a mass of bandages on the left side of my neck. The nurse said, “Be careful not to roll over on your side.” I was really scared I would screw up the whole operation by rolling over on my side, so I spent the next few hours desperately trying to stay awake.
The doctor came in the next day and said in his masterful low-key way, “It went well.” Thick bandages were on my neck, and I was told that if they seeped, I should return to the emergency room.
I was released from Tampa General Hospital on July 4th which I have celebrated for almost 40 years as “the day I got my independence from cancer.”
A few weeks later, we went in for another appointment with the oncologist who checked me over and said, “I’ll be damned. You have no thyroid glands at all.”
Radiation shrunk one thyroid gland, and the operation took the other. The two departments hadn’t talked. He put me on Synthroid at once, and I’m still on a similar medication all these years later. I got up to 315 pounds. My highest weight ever.
I was 36 years old when I got cancer, and I hadn’t smoked since the one week I tried to in 1967, but the doctor told me my cancer came from second-hand smoke because the three people sharing a 12 by 15-foot office space at the Golden Apple with me before I got cancer were all smokers.
This was long before smokers went outside.
To this day, if someone lights up, I leave.
