I’ve been on an unintended journey. A few weeks after my father passed away at age 102 last fall, a little lump on my neck became a big lump. Suddenly, it was almost a golf ball. The ultrasound, blood test, and CT scan were not conclusive, but the ENT was.
“That’s probably cancer,” the Ear, Nose & Throat doctor said to an assistant. “Take a look.” They leaned in toward a tiny screen connected to a camera on a flexible cable that ran up my left nostril and down my throat. It was a strange relief, after two months of Limbo, to finally enter Hell.
My cancer was based, I’m told, at the back of the tongue. It’s most common among tobacco users. For the record, I never smoked a single cigarette, cigar, or anything else. I did consume a ton of strawberries. The Driscoll company, my former brand, is under scrutiny for use of cancer-causing pesticides. But why ponder the unknowable? The disease struck like a thief in the night, and I never saw its face.
My treatment followed a regimen that has been widely used for half a century—35 doses of radiation in the neck and six days of a chemotherapy cocktail called Cisplatin. With weekends, holidays, and snow days, the radiation process stretched over three months. And it was brutal, really brutal.
Each dose required wearing a tight, molded, thermoplastic mask that was fastened to the imaging table with four clamps. The mesh mask allows pinpoint accuracy when targeting the cancer, but it prevents the patient from moving a millimeter during the eight-minute daily session. The radiation doesn’t just kill cancer cells. There’s lots of collateral damage. I lost 30 pounds. Two months later, the side effects have changed the way I look, speak, eat, breathe, see, swallow, sleep, think, and dream. I’m not the man I used to be. But I’m alive.
No need to go into detail here. That’s for my book. Books are what writers do, so a cancer memoir is in progress. Before climbing onto the Cancer Express, I was happily in the home stretch of a book about Betty and Barney Hill, the Portsmouth, NH couple who, against all rational evidence, convinced themselves they had been abducted by aliens. Reluctantly, I moved that project to the back burner. Look for it late next year if I’m around.
I was also working on a website to replace the one I started in 1997. This new one is in WordPress, and I had big plans. You’re on that website right now. By the time the cancer regimen began, I had managed to adapt over 600 of my previously published history articles into a burgeoning Seacoast history archive. Then, in late February, living alone, I went down hard from the treatment. Roughly 10 percent of head-and-neck cancer patients quit. Dehydrated and malnourished, I checked myself into an assisted living facility in Portsmouth. There, a kindly group of caregivers encouraged me to tough it out.
For the next seven weeks, I sat in a big padded chair, dozed a lot, and ate what I could in small portions. I’ve recovered enough strength to return to my little brick house in Atlantic Heights. I wouldn’t win a fight with a newborn kitten, but I am finally back home.
I’m not seeking sympathy. My story seems more typical than rare. Who hasn’t had cancer these days? Two of my friends are fighting now. The goal here is simply to explain, for those who noticed, why I disappeared. I told almost no one. A few friends helped out with rides and chores. My neighbors to the right shoveled the driveway we share. My neighbor to the left watered plants, picked up prescriptions and delivered mail. Since I don’t drive, the Wentworth-Douglass Care Van drivers pretty much saved my life. Walmart and Amazon did an astonishingly effective job delivering groceries and supplies. I should probably stop mocking their evil owners.
Thanks for asking, but I don’t need anything right now. We won’t know for weeks if the cancer is at bay or will spread. And as a Yankee, I’m always waiting for the next shoe to drop. I recently prepaid for my cremation. I’m emptying the cellar, decluttering the office, paring down my library, and working on a will. I’m spending more time with my garden and less time with my desktop.
I wish I could be more zen about the whole near-death experience. Maybe, if my taste buds or voice return, I’ll grow less grumpy. Turns out there are a lot of really important cells in our heads, and radiation really messes them up. “Saliva,” my oncologist wisely pointed out, “is highly underrated.”
The fact that I now have an oncologist boggles my mind, two of them, in fact, plus a speech pathologist, nutritionist, and palliative care person. Last year, I rarely took aspirin for an ache. During treatment, they had me on six anti-nausea meds. Because the treatment focused on my throat and neck, I was advised to have a plastic feeding tube implanted in my stomach. I said, no thanks. I chose not to have an IV port in my chest. I stand by those decisions, but I also made a few terrible, nearly fatal, choices. Self-care, it turns out, is not my strong suit.
Cancer is a black box. We rarely know when, where, and why it will strike. The American managed care system, many believe, is broken. Meanwhile, since COVID, healthcare professionals are burned out and under siege, while good medical insurance is at a premium. Why a cancer book? Because, like Orpheus, I’m back from Hell—and I took notes.
Like most writers, turning life into words is how I process the world. I didn’t ask for this damn assignment, but I couldn’t refuse. I was handed a ticket to a place I never hoped to visit, a place I hope you never go. My job was to report back. Keeping a daily journal was how I convinced myself to get in the van each morning. My writing was my medicine and my ticket home.
Now you know where I’ve been for six months, and why I disappeared. The first draft of the manuscript, meanwhile, is about half done. I promise it won’t be a long book. It will be a frank account of my journey, but not depressing. It may even make you smile. Then, with luck, we can turn this page together.
Copyright 2026 by J. Dennis Robinson. All rights reserved. SeacoastHIstory-dot-com
Sam Wentworth at Ye Sign of Ye Dolphin