All Men are Brothers

Friday, my family celebrated my older brother’s fiftieth birthday. He could not be with us. John died in 1976 at 21. His grave may be in a national cemetery for veterans, but John’s final resting place is not a grave. It is the heart of loving family.

John died of Hodgkin’s Disease, a type of lymphoma affecting less than one percent of our population. Some people get over it and thrive. Others survive the disease only to end up with other types of cancer. Even treated with chemotherapy and radiation, Hodgkin’s can be fatal. More people survive today than when John was sick, in part because he participated in clinical trials for drugs.

Early symptoms of Hodgkin’s Disease are subtle, including fevers and night sweats and fatigue. When you’re in the Navy, working hard, it’s not unusual to experience fatigue. My brother complained about his health for a few months before he could convince anybody that he was truly sick. After that, he got the best care available through the Veterans Health Administration and an affiliated medical university.

Unfortunately, my brother’s disease was virulent and progressive. Radiation didn’t help much at all, and chemotherapy helped some yet also made him sicker. But, you know, John was a hopeful sort of person. What 19-year-old isn’t? He enrolled in clinical trials. He took all kinds of medicine, knowing that one day somebody would learn something from his experience, even if living a little longer meant he would live longer with chronic pain.

While doctors didn’t expect John to live more than a few months after the diagnosis, experimental drugs gave him another year. You can do a lot of living in that time. You can read a number of books, hang out with your friends, go to movies, and generally have fun even if you don’t feel like getting out of bed. You can buy a car and work on the engine in your spare time. You can enroll in college too. John did, his report card arriving the day of his funeral.

In addition to taking painkillers, my brother drank gin. I’m not ashamed to admit it. Now and then, he would run out of his daily quota of pain pills, which only relieved the pain. Nothing could make it go away. Gin failing, he’d try Beethoven, turning up his music up as loud as it would go. And he would still hurt. There was nothing available in the medical world that would begin to alleviate the discomfort John felt, an all-encompassing pain that I have never quite been able to fathom.

Through John, I first learned of efforts being made to bring back the medical use of cannabis, a drug that had been available to previous generations. Given the persistent pain and nausea John experienced, I suspect he could have found some marijuana. After all, it was the Seventies. We lived in a college town. John, however, wasn’t the sort of person to break the law. Instead, he dreamed of a time when terminal patients would be given more alternatives than the establishment had to offer him.

Radiation made John infertile, and the disease disfigured him. His hair fell out, his spine crumbled, and he felt queasy every day of the last year of his life—but John didn’t complain. He waited to die with the same attitude that kept him hopeful he would live one more day. One morning in a biology class he took while he was waiting for Hodgkin’s to claim his life, a classmate asked him, “Are you terminal?” He answered, “We all are.” We are.

Felicia Mitchell. First published in Washington County News (Abingdon, VA), 8 December 2004, p. A6. WCN is a publication of Media General Operations. Copyright 2004.