IMMUNOPATIENT: THE NEW FRONTIER OF CURING CANCER
By Peter Rooney
Hatherleigh Press
immunopatient.com
It’s the second highest cause of death in the United States, and as such a disease that touches almost everyone, either directly or indirectly. But it was still a huge shock to Peter Rooney when he discovered, at age 46, that the ache in his left arm wasn’t due to sore muscles but a lesion on a bone — which led in turn to a diagnosis of Stage IV kidney cancer.
Rooney, who lives in New Hampshire, is the former director of public affairs at Amherst College, as well as a former journalist. And in his new book, “Immunopatient,” he offers a moving and gritty memoir of how he has battled cancer for the last seven years, in part by using an experimental treatment, immunotherapy, that uses the body’s immune system to fight cancer and other diseases.
Rooney’s odyssey began in early 2011 when, driving to work at Amherst one day, he had to turn sharply to avoid a collision with another car that had skidded on the icy road. A searing pain ripped though his upper left arm — the same arm that had been sore for weeks, which he had thought was due to too much exercise or perhaps age.
Since he and his wife, Katharina, would soon be leaving for a trip to Belize to celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary, Rooney decided to get his arm checked out. It was then that an X-ray led to the discovery he had a tumor not only in his left arm but one in his right leg and in his kidney.
“The [doctor’s] words echoed in my head,” he writes. “I felt very alone all of a sudden.”
As he explains, kidney cancer commonly manifests itself on bone. Since chemotherapy is ineffective against his kind of cancer, Rooney, after consulting with several doctors and specialists, got accepted into a clinical trial involving immunotherapy at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. This still-new treatment essentially stimulates your own immune system to work harder to attack cancer cells.
Rooney recorded his conversations with his doctors and thus is able to explain the detailed science involved in the treatment in a straightforward way. But his book also chronicles the difficult path his life has taken, from having to leave his job at Amherst, to battling arthritis that has made his bones brittle, to being forced to combat reoccurring tumors — plus the fear, like any cancer patient would have, that the disease will eventually defeat him.
But as he writes in the book’s conclusion, as he’s walking — slowly — to an appointment at Beth Israel, Rooney is nothing if not determined, and he’s helped through his struggle by his wife, his sons and other friends and supporters: “I’ve always been good at working around obstacles, and I’m not one to throw in the towel while there’s still hope. And I wasn’t ready to give up yet.”
Aside from writing numerous books, Lesléa Newman and Richard Michelson have a few other things in common: several awards and award nominations for their work, a home base in the Valley, and past tenure as Poet Laureates of Northampton.
Now, the two poets and children’s authors, along with 18 other writers, are part of a week-long trip to Israel, where they’re visiting historical sites and sharing ideas with Israeli authors such as Meir Shalev, author of works including “Michael and the Monster of Jerusalem” and “A Pigeon and a Boy.”
The trip is sponsored by children’s book programs PJ Library and PJ Our Way, with support from the Harold Grinspoon Foundation of Agawam, a leading supporter of Jewish cultural and educational programs.
Other authors on the trip are Marla Frazee, author-illustrator of “The Boss Baby,” which was made into a 2017 animated film, and Gail Carson Levine, author of “Ella Enchanted,” a 1997 Newbery Honor book that also served as the template for a 2004 film of the same name.
Michelson, whose lone past visit to Israel was in 1979, said in a press release that he “couldn’t ask for better traveling companions” on this new trip. His most recent book, “The Language of Angels,” winner of a National Jewish Book Award and a Sydney Taylor Gold Medal, is set in Jerusalem, and Michelson said he was looking forward to visiting a street there named after one of the book’s main characters and “returning home with my head full of new story ideas.”
For her part, Newman, the author of 70 books, said she’s also only visited Israel once before, in 1977, and she is thrilled about returning with the PJ Library “and such a stellar group of children’s book authors. I am eager to meet Israeli authors, see the country, and learn as much as I can — and then come home and put pen to paper and see what comes out.”
Steve Pfarrer can be reached at spfarrer@gazettenet.com.