Last updated on 23 December 2025

“We know what we are, but know not what we may be” – William Shakespeare

My mother died at 54 of pancreatic cancer. My father was 87 when he died of multiple cancers, mostly bone and lung. Both were heavy smokers during their lives, though my father quit for at least 20 years before his death. 

Fourteen years ago, I also was diagnosed with cancer. A tumor lodged on my left kidney and the kidney and the cancer were removed. The cancer never came back and I’ve been clean and healthy ever since. 

Until now. 

I was recently diagnosed with prostate cancer. 

The good news is that it was discovered early, or at least relatively early on the spectrum of cancer. Prostate cancer is ultimately one of the most survivable especially when discovered early. The survival rates, according to my research, range from 76 to 100%. So my outlook is good. 

But this keeps going through my head: WHAT THE FUCK?!

When my mom was sick and battling to stay alive, I looked for ways to cope with the fear and frustration and anger I felt. I started running. 

I wrote an essay about how my running and my mom’s cancer were linked that was published in Runner’s World magazine in October 1996, about four-and-a-half years after she died. 

I wasn’t proud of how I coped with her illness. I literally ran away as a distraction from having to watch my mom wither from the inevitably futile treatments. I couldn’t cope any other way.

I ran. Miles after miles. I became vegetarian. I watched my weight and my head. I read books about mindfulness, self-awareness, Buddhism, being present. I journaled. Did I mention I ran? 

Through the years, running was my go-to coping method for dealing with every hairball life threw at me. It also was how I celebrated joyful milestones. 

Now all I can think of is, why the fuck did you choose me, Cancer? 

In the process, running became a part of my identity.  And my identity is that I have spent my life fighting what I feared was an essential truth: I, too, would get cancer. 

My world crashed in June 2011 when a doctor said, “You have cancer.” Without hesitation, we scheduled surgery and a week later I came home to recuperate short my left kidney. I was running again in 30 days.

And aside from periodic CT scans to verify I was cancer free, I never looked back. A year later, the oncologist said, “This was a one-off. Go live your life.” 

I’d rarely heard such beautiful words, and yet….

Not only have I built my life as a tribute to my mom’s too-short life but also to a conviction that, näive or not, I possess the power to keep cancer away. I’ve done everything I can think of, read, discussed or somehow discovered about how one keeps cancer from their doorstep.  I believed that the choices we make, what we choose to eat, how and how often we move our bodies, how we feed our precious minds, all serve as a barrier to the capricious assault of cancer. 

Now all I can think of is, why the fuck did you choose me, Cancer? 

I paid my dues. Cancer got my left kidney. Wasn’t that enough? 

It’s baffling how someone like me who has approached living with such intention while I see others abusing their bodies or in the least not caring at all would still get cancer. 

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not special. I know life isn’t always fair and the Universe owes us nothing. I’m not asking for your sympathy. That’s wasted.

But I am digging to an essential existential question here: Do we have sovereignty over our bodies, over our existence or is cancer just plain bad fucking luck? 

I don’t know the answer. Yet I am determined to mine this experience for the lessons it might contain. 

Have I made a mistake with my diet choices? Have I not done enough (or too much) exercise, journaling, self-awareness work? Weren’t my intentions enough? Should I dive into cold plunging, saunas, cupping, acupuncture, ayahuasca, grounding, eastern medicine? 

“No lesson here,” he said. “other than further proof that the Universe is a dick.”

If the answer is we have little or no domain and it is simple luck then I have been guilty of hubris in thinking I had the power to control my destiny. 

My good friend Russ said something recently that stuck with me. I was sharing just how unfair the diagnosis felt and how frightened I was about my fate. 

“No lesson here,” he said. “other than further proof that the Universe is a dick.”

He also said something else profound. 

“I’d be tempted to treat my own life as a drama–film, book, play–that I’m the lead in and just go along with it, with no expectations, and no idea where it leads. I find I enjoy a story more when I don’t try to predict all the plot twists.” 

In other words, live presently, where I am. I can’t live in the past and I can’t know the future. 

So I’m not giving up. I’m still going to live as honestly and as close to who I am as an aging vegetarian-athlete-observer of life on an unpredictable journey. And now as a two-time cancer survivor, too.

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