A different, radiant Thanksgiving holiday

Do your best not to get cancer in the autumn. Nature (falling leaves), the weather (chill winds) and the time change (failing light), all conspire to lend a poignancy to one’s days.

So how does one negotiate Thanksgiving, the main event of autumn? This year will be an odd one for me and my husband. We had made plans for all the family to gather in South Florida for five days. Tickets were bought; hotels were reserved. Then I had my own personal visit from the Goon Squad (See “Visit from the Goon Squad,” by Jennifer Egan). I was diagnosed with breast cancer on Sept. 20, and now I’m in the midst of radiation. So we will not be joining the rest of the clan for Thanksgiving. I’ll be all aglow right here in the Big Apple.

Still, I find I am grateful this year, for offerings large and small.

First, I’m sending a big shout-out to Marie Curie. When was the last time you gave her a thought? Madame Curie, born this month in 1867, was a pioneering physicist and chemist who did the first research on radioactivity (a term she coined). Her work led to radiation treatment that now saves the lives of millions of cancer patients.

The first woman to win a Nobel Prize and the only woman to win two Nobels, in both physics and chemistry, Madame Curie discovered the elements polonium and radium. Since the deleterious effects of radiation were unknown, she worked for decades on radioactive materials with no protection. She died in 1934 from radiation exposure.

I am one of thousands of people who go five days a week for many weeks to receive external beam radiation that is painless and easy to tolerate and holds the promise of killing cancer cells while preserving life. After visiting Hiroshima and the Trinity Site in the desert of New Mexico, and meditating on Robert Oppenheimer’s “I am become death,” it feels ironic to become the champion and beneficiary of safe radiation.

Marie Curie didn’t live long enough to know that her work would help millions of people, that her gift of brilliance and intuition and perseverance would reap so much good for so many decades.