As colon cancer rises among the young, NU doctors use old tool in a new way

     I wrote this a couple weeks ago, and it got held,  first to find space in the paper, second by all the news regarding the coronavirus. While there is nothing in it about the epidemic riveting our attention, I do think there is a message here that is valuable to anyone facing any kind of dire situation.

     Sometimes fate hits you with both barrels, the good and the bad in one life-altering blast.
     In August 2017, Shannon Harrity found out she was pregnant. Two days later, her husband Sean O’Reilly learned he had metastatic cancer. It had started years earlier in his colon, then spread to his liver.
     O’Reilly’s previous doctors had puzzled over his stomach problems, his bloody stools. Maybe hemorrhoids, they speculated. He was so young — in his late 30s. Too young to bother with a colonoscopy. Too young to worry about what the NU doctors found — spreading colon cancer, Stage 4.
     “You hear the ‘C-word,’ and you think it’s over, you’re dead,” O’Reilly says. “There is no Stage 5. You’re six feet under the ground.”
     Chemotherapy started two weeks later. In a second irony, while he was back at Northwestern Memorial Hospital’s Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center for his first chemotherapy session, as the virulent chemicals were dripping into his veins, his wife was across the street at Northwestern’s Prentice Women’s Hospital, learning she was carrying twins.
     How does a couple respond to this kind of one-two punch?
     “Happy but devastated,” says O’Reilly, an analyst for the federal government.
     “A lot of life changes in very little time,” says Harrity, who works in human resources for a consulting company. “We were definitely overwhelmed.”

     Even his doctors were moved.
     “Emotional for all of us,” says Dr. Ryan Merkow, O’Reilly’s surgical oncologist. “It had a big impact.”
     O’Reilly was 39 when he learned he had cancer, making him part of a new development doctors have identified but don’t yet fully understand. Colon cancer is down among older Americans — those over 50 — but up sharply among the young, jumping by 20%.
     “We’re definitely seeing a trend here,” says Dr. Mary F. Mulcahy, O’Reilly’s medical oncologist. “Reports from across the United States show it is on the rise in people less than 50, on the decline in every other age group.”
     Nobody knows why.

To continue reading, click here.

Sean O'Reilly holding an example of the hepatic liver artery infusion pump helping him fight colon cancer.

Full house

     When the boys went away to college, my wife and I discussed downsizing, moving to a smaller place, maybe two bedrooms in the city.
     That conversation lasted about 30 seconds.
     Because we love the old place, and the neighbors, and moving is such an enormous chore.
     "We moved here for a reason," I'd say, alluding to the schools. "Let's move somewhere else for a reason too." That sounded like logic. Then I'd pause, and add another thought, to seal the argument. "And you never know. The boys could end up back at home."
     That was meant as an improbability. Almost a joke. A little light flourish at the end of a conversation. That wasn't happening. We didn't really expect them back in their old bedrooms, still painted the same aqua that welcomed them when they were 3 and 4.
     But back they are. As of yesterday. With both law schools shifted to remote classes, and one campus emptying out, while the other, New York City, perhaps not the place to ride out a pandemic of unknown scope, return to the heretofore empty nest suddenly seemed prudent. If they don't come back now, I cautioned, coming back later might be more difficult. "You could end up having to walk back from Virginia" I told the younger boy. Air travel still works, for the moment, let's use it. Without coordinating their plans, they arrived at O'Hare within 10 minutes of each other Friday afternoon. I went outdoors to collect them. Normally I'd park and go into the terminal get them—less stress and at $2 to park for 30 minutes, the best deal in the city. But now my wife forbade me from setting foot inside O'Hare. Infection. A changed world. So I pulled over to Terminal 3 and they hopped in.
     I won't lie. I am happy to have my sons home. The younger boy brought his kitten, now almost a cat. The older brought me cigars from his recent travels. "Corona," he pointed out dryly. I nodded, missing the joke completely. Ah. Sorry. Old, slow on the uptake. Corona...like the disease. Good one. That's one of the wonderful things about kids. They keep you on your toes.
     Happy to have them. At least on Day One. Happy to be on my toes, while understanding that happiness at a practical measure taking during a global crisis is perhaps wrong and bound to be fleeting anyway. My wife is already working in a corner of the living room. They'll be upstairs, attending classes remotely and editing law reviews, in bedrooms flanking mine. We'll all be trying not to get in each other's way. Serenity will be a flickering ember we'll all have to puff on to keep lit.
     The first family dinner went well—not in the kitchen, where it would usually be, but in the dining room, the better to spread out and encourage social distancing. The legality of J.B. Pritzker's order for people to stay in their homes was critiqued, and various other practical steps discussed. Then the younger one said, "You should get a gun, dad."
     "That's right," the older chimed in. "You should get a gun."
     I couldn't tell if they were joking or not. They didn't seem to be joking. Too many zombie movies. I have my second FOID card—they expire every 10 years. We'd all gone shooting a couple times, but I hadn't pegged them as gun fans.
     "What would I need a gun for?" I asked.
     "To stop looting," one said.
     "To stop looting by who?" I wondered.
     "To stop looting by whom?" the older one corrected. "Just because the laws of society are crumbling doesn't mean the laws of grammar have to."
     Actually, those two developments usually go hand-in-hand. I didn't say that. Nor did I get annoyed; trying not to be annoyed with each other is, if not as important as washing our hands frequently, still pretty darn important. I just laughed, shaking my head. Which is also important. Because besides the risk of infection, there will be the risks that come with living in an altered world, with changes in jobs as industries grind to a halt and the economy seizes up. Shifting family dynamics, close quarters, all sorts of new stresses vectoring in from unexpected directions. I'm not expecting looters, but I am expecting a certain number of folks to snap and start shooting each other, or themselves, just because that happens periodically already, when there isn't a global crisis. This period is a challenge and, being a challenge, is also an opportunity for us to fall apart or shine. I for one do not intend to shine by sitting in my living room with a shotgun across my knees, waiting to shoot the first person who jiggles the door handle. They can have the toilet paper.
   

Hard work, prayer and carry-out

Sisters (from left) Kim, Minah and Tran Dao opened a Northbrook restaurant and coffee bar, Basu, in late February. Kim encouraged her younger sisters to quit their jobs and go into the restaurant business. “It’s very bad timing,” she said.

    Sarah Stegner looked at the deserted dining room of her restaurant at 6 p.m. Monday and said words that perhaps no professional chef has ever uttered before:
     “I was afraid it was going to be too packed.” 

Sarah Stegner, chef at Prairie Grass Cafe in Northbrook, with husband
and co-owrner Rohit Nambiar. “The plan is to keep cooking,” she said

 
     She was explaining why, even though she could have held a final, last hurrah dinner at her Prairie Grass Cafe before Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s order to indefinitely close all Illinois restaurants and bars went into effect, “that’s not the right thing to do.”
     She said it twice.
     “That’s not the right thing to do.”
     While a goodbye dinner would have raked in money that she, her partners and staff may desperately need in the weeks and months to come, it would also put those who love her Northbrook restaurant in jeopardy for contracting the virus. That, she was unwilling to do.
     Instead, Prairie Grass, like many restaurants, is offering carry-out. I was there picking up dinner out of a sense of moral duty. Part of what gives Chicago its luster is the bountiful array of unique and delightful restaurants in and around the city, from beloved hot dog stands to world-famous 3-Michelin-star eateries. They have been there for us, framing the joyous moments of our lives — we had our 25th wedding anniversary dinner at Prairie Grass. It seems natural for customers to stand with them now that they need us most.

To continue reading, click here.

Readiness is all

     I strive to be rational, and to live a rational life. But I'm not Mr. Spock, so fall prey to some of the same irrational practices dabbled in by everybody else. I wish upon stars, touch wood, and consider certain situations "lucky."
    Or unlucky. Baseless fears and oddball notions afflict just about everybody, and such tendencies are amplified by strain, such as the current crisis.
     For the past few days I've been seeing crows—large, deeply black birds—as not just a welcome indication that the crow population has rebounded. But a sign. A bad sign. A warning.
     Crows aren't quite vultures, but they are omnivores, and will eat almost anything, including carrion and, given the chance, our corpses. It's like they're watching us. Waiting.
     Nor is it just the crows. I set out to walk our dog Kitty Wednesday morning. After a few steps, her attention was riveted to a spot on the lawn in front of our house. She snuffed mightily, and I noticed a scattering of white wisps. Fur of some sort. Plus a bloody leaf, and, at third glance, a white puff that had to have been, until very recently, a rabbit's tail. The culprit? A hawk, probably. Or perhaps a pre-dawn coyote—we saw one only a few weeks ago.
    I gazed down at the white tufts and had a single, chill thought —I'm almost embarrassed to say: "An augury!" A presentiment of what is to come.
    And that is? Difficult to put into words. Something along the lines of: Nature doesn't care about our little edifice of society and culture and hopes and selves. Death just scythes the field, it doesn't first sort the good from the bad. I'm sure that was a fine rabbit, handsome, intelligent, with a tidy hutch somewhere, nosing the morning air for a waft of delicious ... whatever the heck it is rabbits eat. Then bam! Doom from above. Or a final thought, "Oh sh..." as the coyote pounces.
     A prediction. An augury.
     Luckily, I had a few lines of Shakespeare to bat that away with.
    "We defy augury..." then—God, this is really embarrassing—"There’s a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, ’tis not to come. If it be not to come, it will be now. If it be not now, yet it will come—the readiness is all." I said it out loud.
      No kidding. Getting ready is about all anyone can do nowadays. That and wait. And worry.
      The readiness is all. That seems a sentiment worth sharing in these parlous times. Readiness is good, is it not? 
    And yes—don't all shout it out at once—I know the trepidation that Hamlet feels is well-placed: he is reluctant to agree to a duel with Laertes that will in fact—spoiler alert!—kill them both.  Readiness doesn't help him much; he shoulda paid attention to the signs.
      But the current contest is one that will go on with or without our consent. Ready or not, the sword's hilt is thrust into our freshly-Purelled hands and we must duel with this invisible thing, this virus, defending ourselves by ... geez, washing our hands a lot I guess and keeping a sword-length of distance. 
     We defy augury. How? Yes, by being ready. By doing what we can to prepare. Also by not being too afraid. Notice, I didn't say "by not being afraid." A certain amount of fear is inevitable, and even useful, to the degree that it prompts you to vigilance, doing the steps you're supposed to do to keep yourself and others safe. 
     But not so much fear that it poisons these pre-spring days.  Even in the very worst scenarios, the vast majority of people will be fine, only suffering the harm of having to live through the coming ordeal. Unlike that poor rabbit.

Turn-out low but steady in Purell Primary

     Election Day is an all-hands-on-deck proposition at the Sun-Times, and it felt good to be out in the field, working on a story. My instructions were to write something about the election, and my plan was to hit as many polling places as I could, then scoot back home and write it up. I was a little worried that this is too light, out-of-step with the disasters rearing up everywhere. But it reflects what I saw and learned about. 

     The shock of Tuesday’s election is how ordinary it was.
     Considering all that is going on around the March 17 statewide vote — a global viral pandemic, a stock market meltdown, schools cancelled statewide, bars and restaurants closed — Tuesday’s primary election proceeded with surprising smoothness, at least in places such as the Sulzer Regional Library, 4455 N. Lincoln. All the judges who were supposed to show up did show up. Voters came too.
     “Aside from hand sanitizer everywhere and wiping down the pens, it’s business as usual,” said Colby Krouse, an election judge. “Lots of wipes.”
     Sure, there were problems. There always are. Reports of long waits, confusion and late openings from various locations. A major challenge was with election judges. Retirees like to pick up a little extra cash and perform a civic good by serving as judges. But the threat of the virus, which is particularly dangerous for older people, prompted more than 800 judges to bow out at the last moment.
     “I set this whole place up,” said Jim Maivald, surveying a roomful of voting stations, chairs and tables at the Lincolnwood Community Center, 4170 Morse. “Usually there are four teams.”
     Some judges overcame their fears and showed up anyway.
     “I’m very worried about it,” said Vicky Plange, speaking through a mask at the Croatian Cultural Center of Chicago, 2845 W. Devon. “But I’m taking precautions.”
     “Somebody has to do this,” added Cindy Gray-Lewis. “It’s our civic duty, to represent Chicago and Illinois.”
     Chicago, a city that has had its share of difficult and wild elections, from the one after the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, to the Spanish Flu of 1918 and the Pineapple Primary of 1928, punctuated by 60 bombings. (”pineapple” was gangland slang for a hand grenade).
     Successfully conducting an election — perhaps Tuesday’s should be remembered as the Purell Primary — is not typically a source of civic pride. But managing statewide voting was more than Ohio was willing to risk — they canceled theirs, the governor overruling a court that ordered him to hold the election. Florida and Arizona also held primaries.
     Judges who dropped out in Chicago were often replaced by high school students like Noah Kern, 17, who attends North Side College Prep.

To continue reading, click here.

Kindness can be infectious too

Oedipus Cursing his Son Polynices, by Henry Fuseli (National Gallery of Art)

     Anger, too, is infectious. You might not be mad at all, but someone else is, and yells at you. Instantly you're mad, too. You tend to yell back.
     But calm also can be infectious. Kindness too, and here is an example to back that up, something from the email reaction to yesterday's column. In fact, the very first response, Monday evening, from Matt S.—he used his full name, but I'll shield it:

     "I read your article about maintaining a sense of humor and want to say that you are really a pathetically snarky person. No, you aren’t an optimist. You’re just an asshole."

      Maybe because he telegraphed his intent—the subject heading was "what a dick article"—I was prepared.  My reply was in full cross-legged-on-a-lotus-blossom mode:

"But polite. Thanks for writing Matt."

     That usually would be the end of it, or if someone did reply, they'd just take the trowel and ladle on more. But Matt, perhaps feeding off my zen, caught himself:

"I’m sorry. I hate anything political in these times, the memes, etc.. i lean right and found myself backing up JB Pritzker today to someone of my ilk, and had to say “Jesus, dude, put politics to the side for 5 minutes”. this whole thing sucks."

     That seemed sincere, and I tried to respond in kind:

     "No argument here. In my defense, I had a big package about a young guy fighting Stage 4 colon cancer ready to go—I feel less like writing about this virus stuff than you feel like reading it. But all the virus news pushed it out of the paper about 2 p.m.—a long, complicated story, now running Sunday—and I had to whip something together in half an hour, so I grabbed some tweets and retro-fitted them. We're all on edge lately. And thanks for the apology. Very rare in this day and age. Sorry the column struck a wrong chord. Stay safe."

     His reply was:

"You too, man. Young guy with stage 4 colon cancer? geez. we are all lucky to just be freaked with germ paranoia and hand washing ocd.
I look forward to reading that article for some perspective. Please add any info if he needs help with medical bills."

      From calling me an asshole to pulling out his wallet to help with medical bills for someone I was writing writing about. All in the span of 10 minutes. People do cover the spectrum, don't they? I thanked him and said the guy works for the federal government, so his bills are covered.
     This crisis, it will bring out the good and bad in people before it is over. Wouldn't it be something if it was remembered more for the good than the bad? It's still possible. Stay safe out there. Keep an eye on one another.

Better laugh now, before tragedy sets in

     

     If this seems slapped together, it was. Sunday morning I turned in a complicated, long story on colon cancer I'd been working on for a few weeks. Then mid-afternoon, as a string of coronavirus developments pushed it out of the paper. No room. But there was room for a standard-length column, so I batted out this and hoped it flew. I'm not sure it does. I think my point, to the degree I have one, is that if 9/11 started in tragedy and we learned to laugh again, the novel coronavirus is starting in farce and ending in tragedy. 

     You want to hear something strange and a little scary? I felt great Saturday morning. Walking the dog, breathing the frosty air, taking big strides—well, what constitutes big strides for me. An unexpected surge of energy.
     I had no idea why. I hope it wasn’t the snow day, society’s cancelled, End of Times drama of the United States collectively ducking into a crouch, readying itself to start receiving full body punches from the coronavirus. But with journalists you never know. We can’t help but ooo and ahh at the big fire for a moment or two before catching ourselves and remembering the people leaping out the windows.
     Maybe I was just well-rested.
     Social media fixated for some ungodly reason on people buying lots of toilet paper and others condemning them for buying lots of toilet paper. I took to Twitter to try to offer up a silver lining in all this before, you know, thousands of Americans start to die and nothing seems funny anymore, which I distinctly remember as being the bitter icing on the tragedy cake of 9/11.
     I tweeted out a series, beginning with “Look on the Bright Side #1: No sign of Rudy Giuliani.”
     Because this was twitter, people were reacting instantly, pointing out that this was wrong: Trump’s unhinged consigliere was on Fox News, flapping his gums about the crisis. That’s what I get for never watching Fox, and for being an optimist. I keep thinking, with life or death hanging in the balance, the presidential clown show must come to an end.
     But of course it doesn’t. It just gets worse.
     I tried again.
     “Look on the Bright Side #2: Trump not crowing about the stock market.”

To continue reading, click here.