Prayer for an Oncologist

Shana Tovah!  To all you gentiles that’s Happy New Year

Its true we Jews have been working on the academic calendar for more than 5,700 years and this year Chanukah starts on Thanksgiving giving us a month’s head start in the gift competition with Christians.  I know we Jews will lose in the end to all but Jehovah’s Witnesses, who don’t celebrate the birth of Jesus that coincidentally coincides with the Roman holiday of Saturnalia, but we Jews can gloat for a month while Christians await their cornucopia of gifts as capitalists  inundate all of us with endless advertising and possibilities of grotesque consumption.

I digress again.  Rosh Hashanah is thankfully mostly devoid of consumerism, although I am waiting to see what the consumer capitalist economy can do to exploit Yom Kippur, perhaps developing pills which will make our stomachs full for 25 hours.  Who needs to wish people an easy fast when you can sell them a pill to really make it easy?

This year’s dilemma: how does the agnostic cancer patient celebrate Rosh Hashanah?  Tonight we recited the shehechehyanu, a prayer thanking God “for giving us life, sustaining us, and enabling us to reach this season.”  As someone who doesn’t believe in God, how do I make this prayer relevant to me?  I decided that it needed a rewrite.  To whom should I give thanks?  I thought for a brief moment and it came to me, my oncologist.  So here is my universal prayer, appropriate for all special occasions, for non-believing cancer patients everywhere.

Baruch atah onkolog shelanu  shehechehyanu, v'kiy'manu, v'higianu laz'man hazeh.

Blessed art thou our oncologist for giving us life, sustaining us, and enabling us to reach this season.

Dr. Yu doesn’t read this, but I want to thank him and all my other caregivers for helping keep me alive because without their care, I’d probably be dead by now.  Despite their effectiveness, I will not, however, write a “Prayer for chemotherapy.”

Speaking of my health, I suppose some of you read this to get my health update.  Except for neuropathy in my fingers and toes and the some low level pains in my back I feel fine.  I rode my bicycle 105 miles on Saturday so if we use that as my health barometer, my tumors aren’t having much effect on me.  My blood work is normal or close to it so my liver is working well. 

This Sunday I will be marshaling the Transportation Alternatives NYC Century, which means I will be riding 75 miles of the route, fixing flats, putting chains back on, and giving directions.  Hopefully that will be all the work and I won’t be seeing any accidents.

At the Archives, I’ve been working on our calendar, this year’s theme is the Supreme Court and the Constitution, and working on archival videos to put up on YouTube.  The latest is a series of Ed Koch campaign commercials from 1977.  You can watch them and read my commentary at http://laguardiawagnerarchives.blogspot.com/2013/09/1977-ed-koch-campaign-commercials.html 

In other news on the health front, I will be returning to Basel for my next round of radiation treatments, the same treatment I received at the end of July, accompanied by my friend Charlie from October 5-10.  I figure it should be easier this time since I know the lay of the land and will be given Emend, my favorite anti-nausea drug.  Look for my updates as I sit around jet lagged and irradiated with nothing else to do. 

P.S.  I put photos of our Alaska trip online.  You can see them at:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/mslevine3/sets/72157635167536852/