Winning Over Cancer

Carter White House Chief of Staff Hamilton Jordan died yesterday. He wrote about his battle with cancer for The Post's Outlook section on Jan. 26, 1986.

I am lying in my hospital bed in Atlanta. I have been here for five days, have had a surgical biopsy and every test in the book, and now it all comes down to a man in a laboratory somewhere looking at my tissue through a microscope, deciding what kind of cancer I have and whether I will live or die.

My mother and sister make small talk. I find myself knotting the bedsheet around my hand. Just to escape, I turn on the television. I am startled to see a picture of myself and catch the line . . . "CBS News has just learned that former presidential aide Hamilton Jordan is in Emory Hospital and has been diagnosed as having inoperable lung cancer."

Panic grips me, then rational thought returns. If my doctor doesn't know what I have, how in the hell can CBS News know?

This stimulates me to consider having a different medical team. Dr. Lesley Stahl of CBS could make the tough diagnosis. Cool and calm Sam Donaldson of ABC could perform the delicate biopsy. Godfrey "Budge" Sperling of the Christian Science Monitor (who has put me to sleep a couple of times before) could be my anesthesiologist. And columnist Robert Novak could administer the harsh chemotherapy.

Suddenly, my room is flooded with doctors. I try to read them like a jury -- two are smiling, the others are not.

One, a friend, smiles and says, "Hamilton, whenever two or more doctors rush to a patient's room, it's good news!"

"All I ever wanted was a fighting chance," I say.

"You've got better than that," my oncologist replies. "You have diffuse histiocytic lymphoma. Ten or fifteen years ago, this would have been a death sentence, but this is an area of cancer research where tremendous progress has been made. Your disease is localized. We caught it very early and your prognosis is very good."

I sigh with relief. I might still die, but I don't have to die.

It had started the week before -- just after Labor Day -- when I experienced the feeling of having blood trapped in my head. My doctor, Richard Hammonds, knew something was wrong the minute I walked into his office. "Hamilton, your face looks awfully flushed!"

My physical was normal but he sent me down the street to the hospital for a chest X-ray. When I returned, he looked grim.