Ewing Sarcoma and a Purpose Driven Life: Part I
This is the second of three installments of this short story which spans my 11th and 12th anniversaries of surviving bone cancer. You can read the first part, which I wrote last year, here:
Ewing Sarcoma hopped much of the day and slept all night. He paid no attention to the date, time, angle of the sun, or anything else that keeps creatures grounded in reality. He ate when he felt hungry and found shelter when his bum got cold. He lived a clean life, breathing fresh, forest air and consuming only organic plant products. And he said the Shema for Ben, his creator, every night.
Wow, had time passed since Ben drew Ewing Sarcoma on Microsoft Paint before beginning cancer treatment when he was just a teenage boy! Ewing was Ben’s perception of his tumor, a symbol of how to destroy cancer. Ewing completed his task.
Though Ben didn’t know it, Ewing was alive and when Ben no longer needed Ewing, the little guy left. Ewing returned to look in on Ben many years later, when Ben had become a young man. But Ewing left again to let Ben find his own way. Ben was trying his best to live a complete life thanks to cancer, but what about Ewing’s purpose?
Ewing was a loner, the only breathing tumor perception in the world, maybe the universe! If he could convince other people diagnosed with cancer to draw their tumor perceptions like Ben had, then they would be motivated to survive and live a complete life.
But how did he come to life in the first place? How could he replicate that magic, and who would talk to a blue-spotted blob, let alone be convinced to draw a picture of a tumor? Ah, it was futile. Despite his overwhelming sense of hope, Ewing had some logic below those spikey hairs.
Ewing could only hop so long without his butt callouses erupting into a blue-blooded mess. He spent many of his remaining waking hours reading Friedrich Nietzsche, that crazy ass Sigmund Freud, and of course James Patterson. He also considered a new purpose. Brief epiphanies came to him in dreams or when he hallucinated on psilocybin mushrooms (don’t get Ewing started on their natural health benefits or drug policy). He was just always too high to write his epiphanies, and would forget the next morning.
One morning Ewing was awakened by a crying baby mouse. Memories of his old pal, a small mouse named Pong, pulsed through his mind. Snippets of the previous night’s epiphany also crashed through his interrupted REM sleep and into semi-consciousness. Ewing rubbed his eyes, hair, blue spots; anything to stimulate his senses. Hold on, it was coming to him! Yes, wait...he got it! Ewing found his new purpose in life.
Ewing Sarcoma would help children cope with disease.
It’s no fun when kids can’t play with their friends because their illness makes them feel badly. Their friends may not understand why, but I know what’s up. I will watch over them. Kids, get ready to meet your new sidekick, Ewing!
***
I’m a chameleon. I change for self-improvement, and I do this better than anyone in the universe, Ben thought. Change would lead to perfection, which would stymie fears of cancer recurrence or rejection, which would lead to an uncrackable superesteem. Ben chuckled. He chuckles too often, and one has to wonder if he’s becoming as crazy as that crazy-ass Sigmund Freud.
Ben shared this theory with a new friend, McNasty, who is a decade older than Ben. Ben even prefaced his “wisdom” by saying, “I know this is weird coming from someone who is younger…”
McNasty called Ben on his bullshit. “You seek perfection to camouflage your true fears. I do the same thing.” McNasty was the wise one.
It had only been a couple years since Ben felt…normal, mature, like a real adult? He couldn’t explain it, whatever it was. He hadn’t forgotten his past, but also needed to move forward. Ben was destined for a tug-of-war between the two.
Ben sighed. When his mind cluttered he turned to cleanliness. His food, attire, appearance, residence: all clean and neat. Even his cancer brought a sense of cleanliness: he discovered his tumor and then became cancer-free a year apart, nearly to the minute on September 14, always around the Jewish High Holy Days. The New Year always brings a clean, new beginning.
It’s as if Ben and Ewing were born of the same genes.
***
Pong was no longer a baby like when he first met Ewing, but he was still small, even for a mouse. He was orphaned at such a young age after an incident involving his bastard dad that is too horrid to write. And while frolicking with Ewing, Pong got into narcotics and sewage alcohol, and there was some sexual abuse that I also cannot mention…no, he was not abused by Ewing! Get your mind out of the gutter.
Pong’s intelligence was an outlier, even on a human scale. I guess since my dad bestowed me with such wits, I can’t despise the old bastard with all my being, Pong thought. After intense research on ancestry.com and genetic blood testing, with a 95% confidence interval Pong’s father was Master Splinter.
Pong missed Ewing, his only real friend and guardian. He remembered playing with Ewing’s hair and poking his blue dots. Pong had never seen anything so gorgeous and blue! And then Ewing left abruptly because he thought he was dying, and wanted to pass away alone. Pong knew Ewing wasn’t actually dying and considered him kind of an idiot for thinking that, but let him go anyway. Pong understood Ewing needed to find his purpose. Except for IQ, they were so similar.
Pong lived in terror of being eaten, barely sleeping at night and avoiding predators during the day. Although he thought crazy-ass Freud was a complete sicko, Pong would kill just for the opportunity to read his or anyone’s work. All the forest’s simple-minded creatures who wanted to eat him were stuck in the Stone Age, and were ruining his chance to fulfill any kind of purpose! Such wasted brilliance.
Pong always got the short end of the stick, but he remained hopeful. Maybe one day he and Ewing could be together again.
Keep reading to discover how Ewing's journey ends:
Ewing Sarcoma and a Purpose Driven Life: Part II
Disclaimer: The character Ewing Sarcoma and its likeness are the property of Benjamin Rubenstein. All rights reserved.