I begin to sing out loud “melanoma” to the melody of “Poinciana.” I have been doing this for a few weeks, ever since I got the lab report from my dermatologist. Between the singing and biking I've stayed energized against the onslaught of treatment that lay ahead of me. I think often of Lance Armstrong, five-time winner of the most grueling event in sports, the Tour de France, who battled testicular cancer and who somehow managed to come back and win five Tours in a row, and who is now preparing for a record setting sixth win in a row. This is the same Lance Armstrong, who after getting back on his bike after months of chemo and radiation treatments could not catch a middle age woman who passed him on her fat-tired, no-gear bike. That's why his book, It's Not about the Bike, is not about bicycle racing but is about his biggest challenge: cancer.

While the news of contracting a melanoma stunned me at first, I was relieved when the tests of the amputated index bone proved “clean” and the sentinel lymph node, which was located and excised during the amputation, was also clean. Had they proved to be positive, chances for invasion into the body would have increased dramatically.

So I'm thinking a lot about Lance as I start my treatment with Interferon early in October. Interferon is the first real treatment, available now just within the past five years, for melanoma. From all indications, the chemo seeks and destroys any cancer cells that might have slipped through my body's early warning system. At the same time, Interferon gooses my own immune system to increase its vigilance. I expect the first thirty days of the treatment to be the most difficult, sort of like one of those mountain climbs in the Tour.

I've had a port installed at Bronson Hospital so that the Monday-Friday treatments will require a simple connection rather than a daily hunt-for-the-vein followed by the needle stick. I am the same guy who passed out when given a TB scratch test. This was going to be a real trial for me. Needles and chemo: blood tests monthly, toxic chemicals daily and later three-times a week injections for eleven months. I got used to it. In fact, I had taken to thanking my wife after each injection (no, I never gave myself injections! I didn't get that used to it).

The treatment begins in the doctor's back room, which has been transformed into a clean, well-lighted place for chemo treatment complete with a refrigerator full of juices and baskets full of munchies. I'd much rather be having a beer and burger at a bar, but this is a humane way of taking in toxic chemicals. It beats schlepping to a hospital. Here I sidle in with almost no bureaucratic clogging, read newspaper, book, or magazine, listen to a cd, or chat with my wife or friend, depending on who drove me, or converse with the uncommonly friendly and efficient nurses.

I soon discover that people around me make my day although that flies in the face of modern pop psychology, which says you are master of your domain and other people be damned. If left to my own devices, each day would remain gray and overcast-I brood and withdraw. The last thing I want to talk about each day is a detailed account of my treatment and condition; instead, I relish calls from my son in LA when we talk of my hometown Blackhawks and Bears, his softball games and his new job; calls and visits from other family and friends, breakfast at my daughter and son-in-law's restaurant, and, perhaps, a Saturday drive with my wife. It's not that I hate to talk about my health; it's with me 24 hours a day and “The world is too much with us,” as poet William Wordsworth says, so non-health discussions create at least a momentary illusion of a normal life.

I feel like Sisyphus those first thirty days. Each day around noon in the oncologist's back room, I get hooked up to a drip bag of Interferon, which slowly drains me of strength, occasionally nauseates me, and finally when I arrive home leaves my muscles and joints painfully aching and body shaking and cold. Until the Tylenol kicks in, I cannot sleep or rest. I wander about the house to keep the muscles from dominating me. This movement results in little relief, but it gives me something to do. By mid-evening I am able to nap, and by bedtime I am able to sleep with the help of Tylenol PM. Feeling better in the morning, I prepare myself for another go-around-five days a week, up the hill and down the hill for thirty days. You fall off the bike; you get back on it. It's the only way to win.

Before Interferon there was precious little available for treating melanoma, the most virulent of skin cancers. In essence, a diagnosis of melanoma was a death sentence. Timing is everything. When side effects grind me, I remind myself that a few years earlier before Interferon I might have been told by my oncologist that I had a 30% chance of survival.

While the first thirty days of Interferon are shocking and intense, the thrice-a-week injections during the final eleven months don't offer much relief. The injections with short, narrow needles aren't particularly intimidating. Given at bedtime to minimize my awareness of side effects, the shots take on a life of their own. They lurk in the dark waiting to strike. Because I know that the day following an injection results in profound ennui, I come to dread those shots.

The monthly visits to the oncologist's office are both reassuring and disappointing. Full body searches and x-rays prove negative, but invariably platelets, red or white blood cells-one or more-begin to drop below “safe” levels at around seven months of treatment. These low counts necessitate dropping my thrice a week injections to twice weekly until all these counts show improvement. Doctors become jugglers-as one count goes up, another drops. Hence, hope is constantly tested by the vicissitudes of the treatment.

Yet here I am more than a year after treatment started, more than two months after my treatment ended, and I'm feeling strong and healthy. I felt reborn within two weeks, energized enough at one month that I began working out for fifty minutes three days a week, walking two miles once a week. However, there are lingering side-effects: peripheral neuropathy leaves my hands tingling and my feet semi-numb, prickly, and somewhat painful; my hacking cough is still with me but improves weekly; and occasional difficulty finding a fairly common word or solving a complex problem still plagues me.

The most intangible side effect remains-ominous and somewhere over my shoulder. For every oncologist visit and every x-ray, I shall glance over my shoulder and, perhaps for just a moment, hold my breath, but I shall attack that mountain if and when its time comes.