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As a war correspondent for The New York Times, Newsweek and the Philadelphia Inquirer, Rod Nordland faced death many times over. He’s felt bullets whizzing by his head in Cambodia, and once escaped a hotel room in Sarajevo moments before a mortar attack reduced his bed to rubble.
But in 2019, Nordland confronted a different type of danger when he was diagnosed with glioblastoma, the most lethal form of brain tumor.
The median life expectancy for someone with glioblastoma is about 14 months. Less than 7% of people survive five years. Nordland says his time as a war corresponded helped prepare him for his cancer diagnosis.
“One of the most important things I learned as a war correspondent was … to stay calm and not lose control of your emotions,” he says. “And I think that’s been a really good lesson for dealing with cancer, too.”
Optimistic by nature, Nordland acknowledges that he’s already beaten the odds by living with glioblastoma for as long as he has. He’s actively engaged in treatment, but he also recognizes that there is no cure for his type of cancer.
“I had to face the reality that my death was within a fairly short timespan, highly probable,” he says. “That had never been the case before. And I think it made me a better person for that.”
Nordland writes about facing mortality from war and cancer in his new memoir, Waiting for the Monsoon.
Interview highlights
Harper Collins
On his current treatments for glioblastoma
I’m doing a low-dose of chemo, and I’m also wearing a device on my head called an Optune. It’s a series of ceramic arrays that are kind of glued to my head after I shave it. And then they they emit electronic beams that are thought to fight tumors. … So every three days or so I have to shave my head bald and then reapply the arrays. And I have to make sure that the Optune machine is close to me. So it often means having somebody else carry it for me if I move it around or put it in a backpack or in the back of my wheelchair. So that’s a bit annoying and certainly restricts my movement a lot.
On the side effects of the treatments
I do use a wheelchair when I go out to appointments, to doctors appointments, just for safety’s sake. Because while I can walk with a cane sometimes without a cane, I’m very prone to falls and tripping because … when…
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