The firing squad
Looking back at it now, I think I always knew something was wrong. There was a voice I didn't want to listen to. It was soft and inconvenient. The dull pain in my stomach was unrelenting for the past six months. It was a reminder of a very grim possibility. I had also lost a lot of weight, which I optimistically attributed to quitting alcohol. Eventually, I ran out of convenient excuses for my symptoms. I found my nerve and forced my doctor to send me for a colonoscopy.
On the 9th of November 2023, I was sitting in a waiting room in a hospital gown with my ass exposed. A nurse came in and gave me a big smile. To this day, I like to believe it was genuine. I was politely led into the procedure room and asked to lie on my side on the table. I stared at the wall in front of me, determined not to take my eyes off a small crack that had formed in one of the tiles. Anyone who has gone through a procedure like this knows how comically undignified it can be. I still smile when I think about it today. A stranger had just put a suspicious object in my rectum. They were chatting with me as if nothing had happened. They acted like this was the most normal thing in the world. While I lay there explaining what I did for a living, I noticed that the doctor had suddenly become silent. I did not ask her why. I did not want to know why. The room grew silent except for the occasional beeping of a monitor.
“Mr.Becker, I'm sorry to inform you, but you have colon cancer.” Those words flipped a switch and my mind went completely blank. The sentence hung in the air, suspended. She asked me if I have colon cancer in my family. I tried to respond, but no words came out.
I was rolled back into the waiting room. Mia, my wife, was waiting for me there. Her expression changed when she saw mine. I gave her the news, and she immediately burst into tears. Deep down, I think she also always knew. I held her hand and cried a little as well. Even though I had just been given terrible news, I treasure this memory. It was a raw, reflexive reaction. We realised what we meant to each other. Nothing else mattered. She was the only person in the world.
This was not the first time we had received news like this. It was my turn to get bad news, not Mia’s.
I met Mia in a bar when we were at university. We had a mutual friend in common. After talking about how he was skipping all his classes to play computer games, I asked her if she wanted a drink. We sat next to the bar and talked for hours. I remember thinking that something remarkable was happening. I had found a person who was singular. It felt as if she was from somewhere far away. She was in the world but not of it. After we had finished talking, I left the bar and bumped into one of my friends. He asked me where I had been. I told him that I had just met my wife. The rest, as they say, is history.
Shortly after we got married, I was accepted into a Neuroscience Master's program in the Netherlands. We nervously packed our things and jumped on a one-way plane to Amsterdam. We had very little money but made up for it with naive enthusiasm. We went out and experienced everything the city had to offer, which was for free or had a major discount. We felt we were finally part of the bigger world we had always dreamt off. We sat next to canals, drinking wine, watching the sun go down. We rode our bikes with friends, on our way to the next club at two in the morning. We met people from across the globe who shared stories about places we had never heard of. This was the happiest period of my life.
About three years after we'd arrived in the Netherlands, I noticed that Mia had trouble with her coordination. She kept dropping things. This progressively got worse and worse. This started a two-year journey to get to the bottom of what was causing these symptoms. After four misdiagnoses, a young Belgian doctor from the Amsterdam Medical Center finally gave Mia a full examination. He was kind. He listened to her without interrupting. He patiently repeated his instructions during the exam. He spoke softly. On the 4th of January 2021, doctors diagnosed Mia with Huntington's Disease. Huntington's Disease is a neurodegenerative disease that causes motor, cognitive, and psychological difficulties. At the moment, there is no known cure.
After the initial diagnosis of colon cancer, the next step was determining what stage it was at. This involved a week’s worth of blood tests and scans. If the cancer had spread to other organs from my large intestine, there was very little they could do for me. If it didn't spread, they could remove the tumour from my large intestine. Then, I'dd have a very good chance of surviving. At the end of the week, I had a doctor’s appointment where he would tell me what stage the cancer was. Basically, he was going to tell me if I was going to live or die. During this time, for some reason, I couldn't stop thinking about a scene in a movie I had seen. A group of soldiers in the movie got caught while trying to kill Hitler. A firing squad sentenced them to death. In the scene, when facing the firing squad, some of the soldiers started crying and cowering as they stood there nearing their fate. Some soldiers stood up straight. They looked each firing squad member in the eye and had a defiant expression. I always wondered which of these soldiers I would be if I was in their situation. Would I wince or would I sneer?
We arrived 40 minutes too early for the doctor’s appointment. Those were the 40 most terrifying minutes of my life. I kept thinking about those soldiers. I decided then and there that I was going to look the firing squad dead in the eye. I wasn't going to flinch. I wouldn't look away. I couldn't control what was going to happen to me, but I could control how I reacted to it. If the doctor delivered a grim diagnosis, I would absorb it quietly. I would not show fear of any kind.
The doctor came out of his office and called my name. He had a vacant expression on his face. I didn't know if this was a good or bad thing. We sat down in his office. “The cancer has not spread, it’s only in your large intestine.” My whole body went limp. It felt like it was collapsing onto itself. Prayer and anxiety had been the only things holding it together. It was my wife’s birthday that day. On the train home, we sat in silence. Exhausted. Happy.