The Examined Illness

Being a patient is part of being alive. Sooner or later most of us go through it. Disease and serious illness often strike quite randomly, and when they do, we quickly become subject to the impersonal forces of biochemistry and pharmacology. We rarely think about this beforehand and are often totally unprepared for it when it happens. Suddenly there we are, subject to a standard treatment protocol.

Darrel Noellendorf learned this by experience during a month confined to a solitary and sterile hospital room where I received a life-saving stem cell transplant. His room was somebody’s workspace, his schedule was somebody’s work routine, his immune system was systematically crushed, and his prognosis was out of his hands. There was no assurance that it would all work out for the best.

Having spent 30 years teaching philosophy to college students, He was facing the biggest test of all, perhaps the final exam. These are his reflections before, during and after treatment, written in real-time. In his words, 'my brain was sometimes addled by the chemotherapy that sapped my energy and destroyed my immune system, but I wrote out of the conviction that living well includes living well with disease, and eventually living well facing death.'

This memoir expresses those convictions along with those that the virtues of patience, courage, trust, and hope serve us well. A measure of good humor also can’t hurt.