Lifestyle
After years in conflict zones, a war reporter reckons with a deadly cancer diagnosis
Rod Nordland looks at the Istanbul old city from Galata Tower on Nov. 20, 2016. Nordland was diagnosed with glioblastoma, a terminal brain cancer, in 2019.
Yasin Akgul/AFP via Getty Images
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Yasin Akgul/AFP via Getty Images
Rod Nordland looks at the Istanbul old city from Galata Tower on Nov. 20, 2016. Nordland was diagnosed with glioblastoma, a terminal brain cancer, in 2019.
Yasin Akgul/AFP via Getty Images
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
Waiting for the Monsoon, by Rod Nordland
Harper Collins
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Harper Collins
Waiting for the Monsoon, by Rod Nordland
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 the doctor cut the tumor out, he also cut some nerves that provided sensation to my left side. So I have no sensation on my left, which causes a lot of mobility problems. It gives you what they call poor proprioception, which is a fancy word, meaning your brain’s knowledge of where your body is in space. And if your brain doesn’t know where your body parts are, you’re obviously very prone to falls, which, in my case, are bad for my head [and] can be fatal.
On being a war correspondent
When I began working as a war correspondent, I was still 20-something and still in many ways an adolescent. Like a lot of young people, I really didn’t believe in my own mortality. And I think that’s true of a lot of people who do that kind of work, because otherwise, who would do it? Who would jump out of an airplane into a parachute if they didn’t have some belief in their own immortality? So I lost that arrogance very profoundly when I was on a front line against my own rules in Cambodia, on the outskirts of a refugee camp where there was a nasty little internecine war going on between factions that ran the camp and lived off of the proceeds of the food and supplies they could steal. … I was standing shoulder to shoulder with one of these militiamen, and there were bullets whizzing over our heads. … And we just stood there like idiots. And one of those bullets hit the guy next to me and blew his brains out, quite literally.
… After that, I started doing it really differently. That taught me that I was, in fact, mortal, which is an important lesson that all young men should learn as soon as possible. And after that, I never went to the front lines anymore.
On the meaning of life
I asked everybody I met what the meaning of life was. I even asked Alexa. The answer was, to quote Eleanor Roosevelt, that “the purpose of life is to live life to the fullest and to enjoy everything about it.” That’s somewhat of a lame answer. But at one time I asked that question of a nurse and she turned it around on me and said, “What do you think the meaning of life is?” So I said, “Well, I’m sorry, I’m going to have to punt on that. But I think the meaning of life is, as Raymond Carver said, ‘to feel yourself beloved on this earth.’” And that was my answer then. And it’s my answer in the book too.
Sam Briger and Susan Nyakundi produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Seth Kelley and Carmel Wroth adapted it for the web.
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How to have the best Sunday in L.A., according to Keiko Agena
Keiko Agena likes to create moments of coziness — not just on Sundays, but whenever she possibly can.
“Oh, there’s my rice cooker,” she says when she hears the sound in her Arts District home. “We’re making steel-cut oatmeal in the rice cooker, which by the way, is a game changer. I used to have to baby it and watch it, but now I can just put it in there and forget it.”
In Sunday Funday, L.A. people give us a play-by-play of their ideal Sunday around town. Find ideas and inspiration on where to go, what to eat and how to enjoy life on the weekends.
The 52-year-old actor, who played music-loving bestie Lane Kim in the beloved series “Gilmore Girls,” delights in specific comforts like a bowl of warm oats, talking about Enneagram numbers and watching cooking competitions with her husband, Shin Kawasaki.
“It sounds so simple, but I look forward so much to spending time on the couch,” Agena says with a laugh.
It is time that she’s intentional about protecting, especially amid her kaleidoscope of projects. Over the last couple of years, Agena starred in Lloyd Suh’s moving play “The Chinese Lady” in Atlanta, acted in Netflix’s “The Residence,” showcased her artwork in her first feature exhibit, “Hep Tones” (some of her ink and pencil drawings are still for sale), and performed regularly on the L.A. improv circuit. And her work endures with “Gilmore Girls,” which turns 25 this year. Agena narrated the audiobook for “Meet Me at Luke’s,” a guide that draws life lessons from the series, and is featured in the upcoming “Gilmore Girls” documentary “Drink Coffee, Talk Fast.”
She shares with us her perfect Sunday in L.A., which begins before sunrise.
5 a.m.: Morning solitude
I like to be up early-early, like 5 a.m. I like that feeling of everything being quiet. I’ll go into the other room and do Duolingo on my phone. I am a little addicted to social media, so the Duolingo is not just to learn Japanese, but also to keep me from scrolling. Like, if I’m going to do something on my phone, this is better for me. I think my streak is 146. Shin is Japanese, from Toyama. So I’ve been meaning to learn Japanese for a while. For him and his mom.
Then I’ll do [the writing practice] Morning Pages. I don’t know when I learned about Julia Cameron’s book [“The Artist’s Way”] — probably around 2000. I know a lot of people do it handwritten, but I’m a little paranoid about people, like, finding it after I die. So if I have it on my computer and it’s password protected, I can be really honest.
Then a lot of times, I’ll go back to bed. Shin, as a musician, works at night, and so he wakes up a lot later. So I’ll fall back asleep and wake up with him.
9 a.m.: Gimme that bread
I don’t do coffee anymore because it’s a little too tough for my system, but I’ll walk with Shin to Eightfold Coffee in the Arts District. It’s tiny but very chill. Then we’re going to Bliss Bakery inside the Little Tokyo Market Place. We get these tapioca bread balls. If you make any kind of sandwich that you would normally make, but use that bread instead, it ups the game. It’s life-changing. The Little Tokyo Market Place is not fancy or anything, but it has everything that you would want. There’s Korean food. They have a little sushi place in there. You can get premade Korean banchan and hot food in their hot food section. They also have a really good nuts section. It’s just one big table with all these nuts, just piles and piles.
10 a.m.: Nature without leaving the city
We’ll go to Los Angeles State Historic Park near Chinatown. I like that place just because it’s very accessible. Like, they have accessible bathrooms and I’m always checking out whether a place has good bathrooms. We call it Flat Park because it’s a great walk. Like, you’re not really out in nature, but there’s a lot of greenery. You can take your shoes off and at least touch grass for a second.
11:30 a.m.: Lunch and TV cooking shows
One of my favorite salad-sandwich combos is at Cafe Dulce in Little Tokyo. A Korean cheesesteak and a kale salad. That’s always like a — bang, bang — good combo. So we might go there or Aloha Cafe, though it’s not fully open on Sundays. But I love it because I grew up in Hawaii. They have this great Chinese chicken salad and spam musubi and other Hawaiian food that is so good.
We’ll bring home food and watch something. Cooking competition shows are my cream of the crop. My favorite right now is “Tournament of Champions” because it’s blind tasting. To me, that’s the best way to do it. “The Great British Bake Off” is Shin’s favorite. He loves the nature and the accents as much as the actual cooking. He just loves the vibe, the slow pace of the whole thing.
I’m such a TV girl. I love spending time on the couch and eating a meal and watching something that’s appetizing with my favorite person in the world. I’m lucky because I get to do that a lot.
2 p.m.: Browse the aisles
I’ll go to this bookstore called Hennessey + Ingalls. I love art and architecture and design, but you can’t always buy these massive books. But you can go into this bookstore and look at them and it’s always chill.
If I have time, I’ll walk around art supply stores. Artist & Craftsman Supply is a good one. I’ll look at pens, pencils, stickers, tape, washi tape, different kinds of paper, charcoals. In my art, I try to find things that aren’t meant for that particular purpose, like little things in a hardware store that I’ll use it in a different way.
5 p.m.: Downtown L.A. in its glory
We really love to walk the Sixth Street Bridge. It’s architecturally beautiful and they’re building a huge park over there, so we’ll walk around and check it out, like, ‘Which trees are they planting? Can you see?’ We sort of dream about how it’s coming together. But the other beautiful thing about that walk is that if you go at sunset and you walk back toward downtown, it’s just gorgeous. Los Angeles doesn’t have the most majestic skyline, but it’s so picturesque in that moment.
6:30 p.m.: Cornbread and Enneagrams
I’ll head to the Park’s Finest in Echo Park. It’s Filipino barbecue. It’s just so savory and rich and a special hang. Their cornbread is really good. Oh, and the coconut beef, but I’m trying to eat less beef. They have a hot link medley. Oh my gosh, just looking at this menu right now, my mouth is watering. OK, I’ll stop.
One of my favorite things to do is ask friends about their Enneagram number. So the idea of sitting with friends over a good meal and asking them a bunch of personal questions about their childhood and what motivates them and what their parents were like and what their greatest fear is and then figure out what their Enneagram number is? That is a top-tier activity for me.
9 p.m.: Rally for improv
Because I get up so early, if 9 o’clock, I’m ready to go to sleep. But I am obsessed with improv, so on my ideal day, there’d be a show to do. There’s this place called World’s Greatest Improv School in Los Feliz. It’s tiny and they just opened a few years ago, but the vibe there is spectacular.
Then there’s another place where my heart is so invested in now called Outside In Theatre in Highland Park. Tamlyn Tomita and Daniel Blinkoff created it together and not only is the space gorgeous — I mean, they built it from scratch — they have interesting programming there all the time. They’re so supportive of communities that are not seen in mainstream art spaces. It’s my favorite place. Sometimes I’ll find myself in their lobby till 12 o’clock at night. The kind of people I like to hang around are the people that hang out in that space.
11 p.m.: Turn on the ASMR and shut down
I am firmly an ASMR girl and I have been for years. I have to find something to watch that will slow my brain down. Then it’s pretty consistent. I don’t last very long once I turn something on. My eyelids get heavy and it chills me out.
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