PART ONE<br > DIA~i~IOSIS<br >IT IS APPROPRIATE that an odyssey about cancer--the dis-<br >case being the mystery that it ismshould begin on a ludicrous note.<br >In the summer of I976 my friend Todd Strasser and I had just moved<br > M<br >into an apartment on anhattan s Upper West Side. Todd was a<br >quick-witted would-be novelist， and I was a reporter covering the<br >suburban towns of northern New Jersey for The Record in Hack-<br >cnsack. We had met the previous year as reporters in upstate New<br >York for the Middletown Times Herald-Record， and now we were<br >preparing to conquer the publishing and journalism worlds of New<br >York City. Our financial resources were limited， so we jumped at<br >thc opportunity when Todd s aunt on Long Island bought a new<br >couch and offered us her old one if we could haul it away. One Sat-<br >urday we drove to Long Island， tied the couch to the roof of my old<br >Volvo， and stopped for dinner at my parents apartment in the Fresh<br >Meadows section of Queens.<br > To placate my mother I had also agreed to visit her doctor in Fresh<br >Meadows. lhad discovered a golf-ball-sized lump growing under<br >my right arm. I thought the lump was peculiar， like nothing I had<br >ever seen before， but at first gave it hardly a second thought. I be-<br >licved， and I was at least partly correct， that the lump was a swollen<br >gland fighting off a minor infection. I sensed that people found be-<br >nign lumps on their bodies as often as they found lumps in their oat-<br >meal. But the overriding factor in my decision to ignore it was that<br >[ didn t feel sick and I didn t want to believe that I was sick. Except<br >for routine childhood illnesses and an occasional common cold， I<br >had always enjoyed perfect health. Only two months earlier I had<br >passed a medical physical for my reporting job.<br > "I m not worried about it，" I told Todd. "It s just an infection."<br > Todd agreed. "You re right. It s probably nothing. But you<br >should get it checked out if it gets any worse."<br > When I phoned my mother and described the lump， she was more<br >emphatic. (My mother is the quintessential Jewish mother. When<br >