Dancing with Death: Finding Ritual Rhythms on the Dancefloor

Abstract

Friday (technically a Thursday): The story of how I came to see raving as a religious practice begins not on a dancefloor but in a hospital bed, about to undergo anesthesia for a colonoscopy. As I went under, I told the gastroenterologist that I thought it was parasites, but the tests for parasites came back negative. He replied, “The drugs for parasites are nasty. You don’t want those.” It was clear he thought this procedure was unnecessary. I don’t remember replying then, but there are still occasions when I find myself talking back to him in my head. The tumor in my colon was so big that the scope couldn’t get through. Afterward, I sat in that same doctor’s office listening to him say, “I have never diagnosed anyone so young.” He scheduled a CT scan for the following day, Friday, which showed more tumors in my liver. At age thirty-three, I was diagnosed with stage IV colon cancer and descended into a kind of hell.