Chapter Two:

Falling off a Cliff and Other Near-Death Experiences

Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is sellingsomething.

-Dread Pirate Roberts, aka Westley,Princess Bride,1987

There’s one in every family. A kid who spends every summer in a sling or a cast from a fall out of a tree or one of several bike wrecks. A kid who is on a first name basis with the receptionist at the doctor’s office, a kid known internally at that office as a “frequent flyer.” A kid who, before their tenth birthday, has to use the back side of the form and a blank sheet of paper to complete their medical history. A kid who averages 2.5 bloody noses a week and has a designated puke pail under their bed. In our family, that kid wasme.

It pretty much started at birth. I came into the world kicking and screaming with no doctor around to deliver me at 3:00 AM. My older brother, who weighed over 10 pounds at birth, had been a picture of health. I was the baby with colic, and I was inconsolable. My mom tells me that I pretty much cried all day and all night long. My folks tried every baby formula known to man in an effort to calm me down, but nothing worked. In an act of desperation, and defying conventional medical practices, my mom finally put me on whole milk, straight from the cow to my bottle. It worked! Still, growing up, I was a walking insuranceclaim.

I don’t remember how old I was, but my many ailments led me to become somewhat obsessed with dying at an early age. I had convinced myself I would be one of those poor unfortunate souls to never reach adulthood. The only question was, “How would I die?” Would it be quicksand? I felt like lots of people in the movies and on television shows I was watching during that time were being sucked under by quicksand. If not quicksand, I was sure I would succumb to cancer. Movies likeLove Story andBrian’s Song haunted me, even though it was adults dying of cancer in those movies. My cancer self-diagnosis stemmed from how skinny and puny I was for my entire childhood and even into my early adult years. For the record, I did not weigh 100 pounds until after high school. I was scary thin, and I could tell family members and friends were very concerned aboutme.

“How skinny were you?” Thanks for asking. I was so skinny people in developing countries had pictures of me on their refrigerators. I was so skinny I kept getting Care Packages from UNICEF. I was so skinny UN helicopters would air drop food crates on my basketball court. I was so skinny I could hula hoop with a Cheerio. I was so skinny I could hide behind a fishing pole. And since all the pictures and movies of people I had seen dying of cancer were skinny, I was sure my time on earth would beshort.

Eventually, my fear of dying from cancer diminished as someone suggested I might be living with a tapeworm in my intestine and explained how it could be coiled up as much as four feet long.