Psychiatrist Dirk De Wachter tells in an interview with The time that he has cancer. He has already had surgery and is now in the chemotherapy phase.
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Dirk De Wachter is the author of some popular books on the art of living and suffering. He comes from Boom, lives in Antwerp, also has his private practice there and is a professor at KU Leuven.
‘The cancer diagnosis was completely unexpected,’ he says in The time. ‘I had no complaints. It was a blow to the jaw, even for a psychiatrist who is supposed to keep his emotions in check.’
Due to the diagnosis, he has to stop working for the first time in 35 years. ‘I have aged several years in the past two months. The operation weakened me a lot. I couldn’t take three more steps. I felt like a man of ninety. It has improved a lot: now I feel about seventy. So I’m very busy with a rejuvenation cure. Hopefully I can feel 61 again soon, my real age.’
He also talks about confronting death: ‘I didn’t look her in the eye. It’s more indirect. I feel her sneaking behind me. She breathes coldly on my neck at times and straightens my hair. Sometimes I am overwhelmed by a dantesk sense of the limbo of hell. When I’m in the waiting room of the oncology department, or when they’re putting on an IV.’
He says he does not believe in a life after death, but because of the situation he is more concerned with the finiteness of life: ‘The theme of life and death is more sensitive’.
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