Martin Goodman.

The doughty bird had deeply integrated himself into my consciousness. I began to believe very strange things. Woody became conflated with “Big Red,” probably by dint of his scarlet head and sharp, needle-like beak. He was inside my own bloated body, fighting the cancer, and Woody always trumped Wally, right? Woody Woodpecker and I now co-existed in a delusional universe. Others praised me for how courageously I was holding up under an experimental protocol thrown at an unusual cancer, but they didn’t look closely enough. That was OK, though, just fine; Woody Woodpecker would be on soon and I would be better. Maybe even healed. You see, by now I believed that if I made it to 4:00 every day and saw Woody, it was a guarantee that I would not and could not die. Not one of my doctors realized this.

Until one rainy day in the spring of 1979. Doctor’s rounds were a constant feature of my routine. They included affable questions, broad smiles and mutual briefings on my condition, which was miraculously improving. The odds had been greatly against my leaving the hospital alive, so this fact excited my physicians to no end. Unbeknownst to me, the news had gone out among important parties in the medical and research sectors, and some of them decided to come in for rounds that afternoon. Had they waited 30 minutes either way, they would have been spared what happened next.

Woody, you see, was a few minutes ahead of them. As I was clinching another day of life with “Your old pal, Woody Woodpecker!” a flock of docs strode in to talk. Plainly annoyed, I kept looking past them, trying to focus on Woody’s showdown with Buzz Buzzard. One slim, sandy-haired doctor, trying to be helpful to his colleagues, reached up, manually switched the TV set off, and unthinkingly ended my life.

Well, so I believed. Had I been in my right mind, his actions would not have mattered (or at worst I could have simply used my remote), but my “right mind” had just collapsed into a fading pinpoint of light on a TV screen. I rose from the bed, cursing and snarling like a diseased werewolf, determined to take my killer down with me. I never felt the IV needles tear from the crook of my elbow, nor do I remember hurling my entire pitcher of ice water at the esteemed assemblage; only later did I learn of the carnage. I can only recall, as I slipped into sedation, the laughing face of an animated woodpecker fading into the darkness as he bailed out of my long, bloody, death march.

Woody, O Woody! Why hast thou forsaken me!

As it turned out, he never did. After that aggressive episode, the talented people in charge of my care made some adjustments. I incrementally improved in both mind and body, and something like my sanity returned. So did Woody, every weekday at 4:00, but only in the context of raising my spirits. While I still looked forward to his show, I no longer thought him responsible for keeping me alive. My treatment would continue until 1980, some two years after diagnosis. There were still rough spots ahead but my doctors and I were going to pull off the upset victory… with one last push from Woody Woodpecker.

He spoke to me in my hospital bed on a late summer afternoon in 1979. Born to Peck was Woody’s last great gift to me, and the day I saw that wonderful short, I knew that I had truly turned the corner, for Woody never lied. The cartoon, made in 1952, starts out as one of the most depressing ever made; Woody is seen in decrepit old age, wistfully recalling his vibrant youth and mischievous, maniacal feats. We witness a poignant montage of Woody’s life, and when the reminiscing ends, the creaking ruin that was Woody prepares to end his own life. At this ghoulish point in the cartoon an animator steps in, a merciful deus ex machina who produces the Fountain of Youth for our feathered friend. Revitalized, reenergized and once again in the prime of life, Woody springs forth and proves that he was indeed born to peck.

Woody, in this one short, recapitulated my illness, my debilitation, my depression and then my resurrection. I may have been delusional earlier, but I had somehow glimpsed the truth beneath the obsession: The animation gods had sent Woody Woodpecker to me. Woody really did know what I was going through. He did fight for me. Now, as my lucidity returned, he showed me that it was over at last, that I had gone from a diseased piece of meat with a terminal prognosis to a young man about to return to life. I had always felt that my love of animation was an important part of who I was. Now I knew that it always would be. I would live to enjoy Woody and his friends for many years to come.

I still believe that’s exactly what the crazy woodpecker wanted.

My props for this month’s column go to the staff of Boston’s Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Chris Robinson (who taught me how to write this sort of thing), and, of course, to “my old pal” Woody Woodpecker.

Martin "Dr. Toon" Goodman is a longtime student and fan of animation. He lives in Anderson, Indiana.