THE LAST NIGHT Tommy Raskin spent alive, he was with his dad. Swimming in an ocean of grief as each event unfolded, it’s a wonder how Raskin kept his head above water. A loss so enormous and devastating one couldn’t possibly have fathomed what more could-and would-come in the days and months ahead: an insurrection, contentious impeachment hearings, death threats, a demanding course of chemotherapy. The exact day, two years earlier, that his 25-year-old son, Tommy, had died. Once, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez dropped by his house with freshly squeezed orange juice in the weeks after he was first diagnosed. An incomplete list: his wife, his daughters, his big sister, his little sister, his brother, friends, neighbors, and colleagues. Indeed, there is a remarkably long roster of people ready to drive Raskin to treatment, to cook for him, to keep him company, to do whatever he needs. I think, a lot of times, about people who go through cancer without a lot of love and support, and it makes me terribly sad, but that’s not my situation.” “I’m surrounded by a lot of wonderful people in my life. “I’m pathologically optimistic,” he says. He speaks openly and easily about the realities of having cancer. There are no twangs of self-pity in his voice. Trying to get him to harp on the difficulties of his situation is like trying to nail Jell-O to a wall. This should elicit complaints from Raskin. It long ago took his hair, and recently his eyelashes have started to fall out. It makes his nerve endings sensitive enough that he struggles to button a shirt. He tells me it turns his tongue the flavor of tin. Home or not, the effects of chemo are grueling. Raskin receives chemotherapy at the hospital. Then he had to have two surgeries, chemo, and radiation, all requiring significant time in the hospital. This course of treatment is different from the one he had when he was diagnosed with stage 3 colon cancer in 2009. For the better part of a week, he’ll remain connected to a pump, tucked into a little backpack he can wear over his shoulder, that will allow him to continue his treatment from home, save for the daily trips he has to make back to the hospital to refill the pump with drugs. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Centur y) and some work to do (he hasn’t missed a vote or hearing since his diagnosis).Īfter that, he’ll leave the hospital, but he’s not done.

He knows what’s coming.įor the next three to four hours, he’ll sit in a private treatment room-a room he says is so sparse he’s told the nurses he may soon show up with campaign posters to decorate the walls-where he’ll get plugged into a machine that will begin the drip of cancer-killing drugs into his body and start what he calls a “week or two of chemo hell.” To pass the time, he’s brought a book to read (a biography called G-Man: J. But unlike the life-changing events that have unfolded, today there’s no surprise. This is perhaps unusual for a guy who’s been through unimaginable trauma over the past few years.

He confesses that he fell asleep watching Succession-a show he loves-the night before. In fact, Raskin is a turbine of wit he’s funny and energetic. (“Triple hit, which means it’s a little more resilient,” he adds.) In this case, curable means six rounds of chemo, each round lasting five days. A leopard-print bandanna (a gift from Steven Van Zandt-yes, Little Steven) covers his head, now bald from the chemo.Īfter discovering a “Schwarzenegger sized” mass on his neck at the end of last year, Raskin, now 60, was diagnosed with stage 2 diffuse large B-cell lymphoma-a very serious but curable form of cancer. He’s not exactly wearing pajamas, but he’s certainly not wearing the navy blue suit he had on when I saw him the week before. He passes rows of cherry blossoms and makes a right into the parking garage of Georgetown University Hospital.Ībsent is the buttoned-up attire one typically associates with a member of Congress. With his hands on the steering wheel at ten and two, he glides through the green lights on Nebraska Avenue in downtown D.C., 25 minutes away from his home in Maryland. Once he starts his “five-drug chemo cocktail,” he won’t be able to operate a vehicle for days. on a Friday morning in March, and Representative Jamie Raskin has decided that he wants to drive himself to chemotherapy.

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