When my father was misdiagnosed with tuberculosis in 1973 we soon learned that the real disease was cancer. It was in his lungs, but had started elsewhere. His first operation removed part of a lung, and he came home, but was soon back in Temple University Hospital with a second operation, and in his weakened state he never left the hospital again. I visited every day after school, learning to massage his atrophying back muscles and imagining his body invisible warrior cells fighting back against the cancer along with the chemicals and radioisotopes. But he knew, before I did, that there was no cause for optimism. His army of immune defenses and therapies all failed him.
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