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PBA: How did you get through all that?

RO: Maybe the key to it is that word you. Through it all I kept telling myself I couldn’t let them think of me as some impersonal patient, the guy who shouldn’t have had a Klatsin tumor but did. I kept insisting that they look at me as a person. PBA: And you started doing chemo. RO: I know. It sounds like an accomplishment you’d rather not have. But I did three cycles of it. Wednesday, Wednesday, off, Wednesday, Wednesday, off, Wednesday, Wednesday, catscan. Then back for the second and third rounds. I lost hair everywhere except on my face! I still had to shave every morning! But my appetite was fine. People would look at me chowing down and call me a freak.

PBA: Were there other complications?

RO: At one point there was a pulmonary embolism. If it’s in the book, I’ve had it. My kidneys were down to 52-55 percent function. PBA: But that prognosis was also off. RO: More than that. I kept going back for medical visits. Then in July 2008, the surgeon who was supposed to have operated on me the first time walks into his office with a big smile. I can’t tell you how relieved I was to see that because, to tell the truth, I’d never particularly liked the guy because he was always gloom and doom. But now he’s smiling because he says I’ve progressed enough that he wants to give the liver operation another try.

PBA: Finally!

RO: (laughs) No, not quite. Because as soon as my parents leave me in the hospital room before the operation, the doctor comes in to say that it’s off because my blood count is too low. Don’t believe it when you hear it’s always one step forward and two back with these things. The truth is, it’s usually one step forward and five back.

PBA: They built your count up again.

RO: Right. Then they did the operation — 11 hours worth! They found the first spread of the cancer to my lymph nodes and pancreas, but it was early enough to stop. When they finished, I’d lost 30 percent of my liver.

PBA: And since then?

RO: Since then I go in for a catscan every three months, then sit around in a doctor’s office trembling about what the test says.

PBA: Have you ever had any doubt that these problems were caused by exposure to Ground Zero?

RO: How could I? There was no cancer in my family going back at least three generations. Even the relatively minor ailments I’ve had along the way were for the first time in my family. Then there were the conditions while we were down there guarding. I mean, if the guy doing the power wash has to be dressed up like he’s invading a nuclear plant melting down, what does that say about the safety of other people in the area? That’s why it’s really time to stop haggling and get the Zadroga bill passed, but with some very specific references to cancer added, of course.

PBA: In those rare moments when you can step back from this horrid series of ailments, what goes through your head?

RO: First, you have the two types of people I’ve come across with problems like mine — those who are fighting to live and those who are fighting to die. I include those who insist they’re fighting to live but keep giving themselves deadlines, like, “If I can only make it through to Christmas!” That to me is the same thing as saying they’re fighting to die on December 26. I can’t hear that kind of thing. Anybody who thinks like that is going to end up taking his feelings out on others and that’s not going to be pleasant to be around.

PBA: You must have moments of terror.

RO: Of course. What I have to keep reminding myself is that I’m a cancer fighter, not a cancer survivor. Whenever somebody refers to me as a cancer survivor, I really have to correct them. Nobody survives cancer. It’s going to get you directly or indirectly one way or another. But you can go on fighting it and all the baggage it brings with it.

A week after sitting for this interview, Robert Oswain was married at City Hall.