6: Intoxicated By My Illness -- By Anatole Broyard

When Michael was diagnosed with incurable cancer, we did what we often did when we needed to bone up on something -- we visited the library. We checked out a whole stack of books dealing with cancer and this one was my favorite one of the bunch. I started reading parts aloud to Michael while he was ill but not bed-ridden. This collection of essays and notes on life and death tells the story of the author's final months of life after being diagnosed with prostate cancer. Broyard writes honestly and wryly of his feelings, as he describes his ideal doctor, suggests how to cope with knowing you're dying, and observes his friends' and society's attitudes towards death. Highly recommend this book. Turned out Michael had read this many years ago as well but he let me read passages I really liked to him. We laughed often while going through this book. Broyard seemed to share a similar sense of humor as Michael. When Broyard suggests that getting a whole new wardrobe of elegant, casual clothes as a form of therapy, Michael quipped, "If you're going to die, you might as well wear Armani."

Here's a little taste:
    "The knowledge that you're ill is one of the momentous experiences in life. You expect that you're going to go on forever, that you're immortal. Freud said that every man is convinced of his own immortality. I certainly was. I had dawdled through life up to that point, and when the doctor told me I was ill it was like an immense electric shock. I felt galvanized. I was a new person. All my old trivial selves fell away, and I was reduced to essence."

List of books read in 2006

( Click for many more excerpts from the book )