Achi news desk-
On the day of the total solar eclipse, Eric Seidlitz will not only experience the celestial event of a lifetime, but also a birthday he thought he would never live to see.
A former cancer researcher turned teaching professor at McMaster Hamilton University, Seidlitz, who turns 60 on Monday, said he received a serious diagnosis in the fall of 2019.
A tumor was growing in his neck and spreading rapidly, doctors told him and his wife Wendy. Rare and fatal, the Stage 4B anaplastic thyroid cancer was expected to kill Seidlitz within months, even after he underwent surgery and a round of treatment.
“If you get this kind of diagnosis, you’re hanging and you don’t know what to do,” Seidlitz said, sitting across from Wendy, a registered nurse, in their living room in Hamilton the last month.
Seidlitz – self-described as practical, quiet and “a little weird” – began planning his own death.
He chose the hospice where he would spend his last days, made a playlist for his funeral and found meaningful ways to say goodbye to his family, including his two sons, friends, students and colleagues.
He and Wendy cried together and celebrated life together. They traveled to Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon in February 2020 – weeks before the pandemic triggered global lockdowns.
They began the process of establishing a scholarship at McMaster in Seidlitz’s name. His elderly parents flew in from Manitoba to say their final goodbyes.
‘I call him my unicorn’
Then, they wait for the end. And wait.
But by April 2020, to the surprise of his doctors, the single round of chemotherapy and radiation he received had destroyed the cancer, Seidlitz said. He was in inexplicable remission.
“I call him my unicorn,” Wendy said fondly.
They are throwing a party to mark his milestone 60th birthday on Monday – the same day as the total solar eclipse.
“Every birthday is good because I wasn’t supposed to see 56, let alone 60,” he said. “The fact that it coincides with the eclipse? I can’t pass that up.”
As the moon passes between the sun and Earth, they’ll be watching from their front lawn, alongside many of the same friends and family Seidlitz said goodbye to in 2020.
To this day, Seidltiz said his doctors cannot explain how he survived anaplastic thyroid cancer, which was confirmed through DNA testing of the tumor he had removed.
The vast majority of patients do not survive a year, the American Thyroid Association reported in 2021. Only about seven percent of patients are alive after five years, according to the Canadian Cancer Society.
Seidlitz has a simple explanation: “Because I was unique and different, I didn’t end up dying from this.”
Not its 1st total solar eclipse
Dr said. Arden Corter, a Toronto-based psychologist at Sunnybrook Hospital’s Odette Cancer Center, said Seidlitz’s celebration was “pretty special” and said it shows how some survivors “try to live completely in the present moment.”
“If I’m connecting with the things that matter most to me day to day, then I’m leading a meaningful life,” he says.
“That’s one of the things that helps protect against fear.”
Seidltiz described his cancer diagnosis as a cloud that follows him, but gets further away as the years go by.
He said it made him more philosophical and able to focus on things that bring him joy – stained glass art, photography, teaching and, of course, the total solar eclipse.
Hamilton is one of a handful of Canadian cities that will be in the entire route on Monday.
This is not the first time Seidlitz has witnessed one where he lives.
He said he also experienced the rare sighting as a teenager living in Portage la Prairie, Man., on a frosty February day in 1979, staring through a strip of exposed film in an attempt to protect his eyes.
“Everybody was watching it on the frozen lake,” Seidlitz said. “It was getting darker and darker. Then all of a sudden I saw this flash and it was dark. The experience was amazing.”
Ad blocking test (Why?)
Source link
Related
