Benjamin Rubenstein survived cancer, but now there are new challenges to contend with.
Benjamin Rubenstein is the author of the "Cancer-Slaying Super Man" books and other personal essays. He speaks about personal health, feeling superhuman, and the urge when he's intoxicated to eat jelly beans--all of them. The two items he brings with him everywhere are a flask and gum, particularly Juicy Fruit or Big Red because those have sugar instead of sorbitol. Benjamin doesn't fuck around with weird chemicals (excluding whatever is in cheap whiskey). Benjamin loves inspiring others through a combination of insane stories of survival and attempted humor.
This story originally aired on Oct. 20, 2017 in an episode titled “Adaptation.”
Story Transcript
I was nineteen years old standing on a wooden platform in a huge square room in front of a machine that delivered radiation. To give you a sense of the size of this room, imagine you're microwaving a single popcorn kernel, only that popcorn kernel is alive and named Benjamin Rubenstein.
My radiation technician, a lean blonde girl who looked not much older than I was, told me to stand with my arms slightly out to the sides and to stand for five minutes without moving. I had some questions I wanted to ask her, like if you don’t like your patient, do you give them extra radiation? And do you and your co-workers have competitions to see who can deliver the most radiation, sort of like Employee of the Month? And do you want to get coffee with me in about half a year when I’m no longer near death?
She exited the room and pulled the Fort Knox-sized door close behind her and the “X-Ray In Use” sign lit up red.
I volunteered to receive radiation because it seemed like a good idea at the time. Radiation was found to kill cancer cells in the late 1800s when scientists realized that it attacked rapidly dividing cells like those in tumors. At first, they didn’t understand the power of radiation. They would manipulate radium with their bare hands only to find that it scorched their tissue from the inside.
Over the last 120 years, radiation techniques have come a long way. They now have the CyberKnife machine and proton therapy which can kill cancer cells while minimizing damage to healthy ones. But back in 2003 when I was facing radiation to treat my second cancer, those didn’t exist and I would receive 1250 rads of radiation spread evenly from head to toe. All my cancer cells and healthy cells would get the same amount.
Now, there were pros and cons to receiving radiation. Pros: the possibility of killing the cancer in my body and… never mind. There's one pro. Con: a guarantee that twenty minutes after receiving radiation there would be an explosion out my mouth and colon. Con: the possibility that the radiation wouldn’t kill my cancer. Con: the possibility that radiation would cause a second cancer, or rather a third cancer for me. Con: the possibility that radiation would damage the healthy cells in my body.
I considered all of these and decided that the pro outweighed the cons.
With the door now closed, I heard the machine click into place. I wondered, should I close my eyes? Should I stare at it? Should I stare at some other point in the room? It didn’t matter. The radiation would find my eyes no matter where they were looking. I just hoped they would find those cancer cells wherever they were hiding too.
The machine started. I knew it started not by sight or sound or smell but by the immediate churning in my gut, the nausea that burst through me, the hairs on my arms that stood on end. I decided to stare at the big black eye of the machine.
I stood there motionless for five minutes, then the technician, whose bad side I did not want to get on in case my hunch about the Employee of the Month thing was true, re-entered the room, told me to turn around and face the wall behind me for five more minutes. I was depleted and weak from the chemo I had already received and those ten minutes were among the hardest things I'd ever endured.
I got radiation for ten minutes a day, twice a day for four days. Half a year later, I got well and I've been well ever since. That was thirteen years ago.
I have noticed some unique side effects from radiation over the years. One in particular stands out. A few years ago, I noticed my memory wasn’t as strong as it had been. Throughout life, I had this amazing episodic memory. I could visualize events from my life, connect those events to certain periods of time or sometimes even to specific dates.
But a few years ago I had trouble remembering recent events, and I told my brother this. And Jonathan said, “I don't even remember what I ate for lunch today.” But I wasn’t content just having a stronger memory relative to Jonathan.
I thought about my lifestyle. Maybe there's something in my lifestyle that’s making my memory slip. I was on a no-sugar, low-carb, calorie-restricted diet and I drank whisky and vodka and rum and Jamaican rum known as white lightning. I considered that maybe not giving my brain the energy from food and the alcohol were causing my memory problems, and I accepted that answer.
But soon, I started to struggle with names, like names of songs, names of movies, names of actors and artists. I knew something was going on here. I went online to the National Institute of Health website and I did some research. What I found is that radiation to the brain often causes permanent deficiencies in some people. Enough was enough. I had to find out once and for all what was going on so I sought help.
This past March, I got cognitive testing. Over the course of four hours I went through a slew of brain tests, one to measure my ability to see patterns, one to recall details of a story I was told, one to name as many mammals as I could in a minute. I was told the results would take five weeks. Sure enough, five weeks later I get a manila folder in the mail and I take out this six-page packet.
The first page talks about my IQ. I didn’t even know they were testing IQ. It said mine was between normal and a genius. And I rejoiced. I figured if I just cut some whisky or some white lightnings then I'll be fine.
Then I flipped the page. According to the cognitive testing, I’m in the bottom seventh percentile for word recall and my ability to name things. Basically, I can think of the words to say it just takes me longer as if there are these microsecond delays in between segments of my speech.
For the rest of the day, I just felt so sad. I endured so much to extend my life, yet the treatments threaten to reduce the quality of that life. Cancer stole my adolescence and now it was stealing my words.
The next day, I pulled myself together. Humans have this amazing ability to adapt and I had to adapt because my brain will never repair itself no matter how many white lightnings I reduce for my consumption. I thought, “What can I do to adapt? What can I do so that I can communicate with others using my words, and the right words? What can I do?”
Then it hit me. If I reduce the speed of my speech, then I'll give my brain a chance to catch up. I'll avoid those microsecond delays.
Now that I found the solution, whose footsteps would I follow to hone my newfound speech skills? Because humans are also amazing at following examples, sort of like a template. The thing is, this time, I did not even need to slow my brain down for one name to come to mind.
I started studying him. I studied his mannerisms and his speech. I watched all his movies and his interviews and his commercials, even those car commercials in which he doesn’t say anything at all. This man is the gold standard of slow speech. He is the poster boy for cranial radiation-induced speech deficiencies. My new template I'll follow, my new speech idol is Matthew McConaughey. All right, all right, all right.