Time on Fire

The Book of the Week is “Time On Fire” by Evan Handler, published in 1997. The author, a Broadway actor, tells his readers how he survived a five-year bout with myelogenous leukemia in the early 1990’s. His condition necessitated various extreme treatments from which, at that time, fewer than half of patients emerged alive. He details them, good and bad, he received from various medical facilities, whose names he mentions. One action he took, among others, was to get a private hospital room so as to minimize his stress level. One should spare no expense when one is fighting for one’s life. This intense survival story was inspiring, rather than depressing.