IT’S JUST AFTER 7:00 A.M. on a Friday morning in March, and Representative Jamie Raskin has decided that he wants to drive himself to chemotherapy. Once he starts his “five-drug chemo cocktail,” he won’t be able to operate a vehicle for days. This is his chance. 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. He passes rows of cherry blossoms and makes a right into the parking garage of Georgetown University Hospital.
Absent is the buttoned-up attire one typically associates with a member of Congress. 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. A leopard-print bandanna (a gift from Steven Van Zandt—yes, Little Steven) covers his head, now bald from the chemo.
After 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. (“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.
The mood in the car is not somber. Not at all. In fact, Raskin is a turbine of wit; he’s funny and energetic. He confesses that he fell asleep watching Succession—a show he loves—the night before. This is perhaps unusual for a guy who’s been through unimaginable trauma over the past few years. But unlike the life-changing events that have unfolded, today there’s no surprise. He knows what’s coming.
For 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 ) and some work to do (he hasn’t missed a vote or hearing since his diagnosis).
