Our Cancers

Poet and playwright Dan O’Brien chronicles the year and a half during which both he and his wife were treated for cancer. On the fourteenth anniversary of 9/11—an event that caused their downtown apartment to become “suffused with the World Trade Center’s carcinogenic dust”—Dan O’Brien’s wife discovers a lump in her breast. Surgery and chemotherapy soon follow, and on the day of his wife’s final infusion, O’Brien learns of his own diagnosis. He has colon cancer and will need to undergo his own intensive treatment over the next nine months. Our Cancers is a compelling account of illness and commitment, of parenthood and partnership. This spare and powerful sequence creates intimate mythology that seeks meaning in illness while also celebrating the resilience of sufferers, caregivers, and survivors.