It Might Get Messy

I continue to deal with the physiological fallout of cancer, radiation, and chemotherapy. Still unable to eat solid food, voice remains a wreck, weakness is constant. I even have periodic serious pain in my throat, and I have no idea where that’s coming from. I must admit to being shocked at the brutality of the treatment and the length of time it’s taking to recover. 


I started to think I’m malingering. That I’m actually fully recovered, but my brain/body refuse to recognize it and that I’m just taking the opportunity to be lazy. But then I look at myself in the mirror, and I realize that even my skin where the radiation was strongest has yet to heal. It’s still brown (burned) and peeling. I guess I really am still recovering. 


But there’s no sense whining about it. It’s a passage that must be made.


The physical effects are just a fact of life. Giving us an opportunity to at least start to deal with the emotional and psychological wreckage. For one thing, at 58 years old, it’s much clearer and more emphatic now that I’m walking on the backslope of life. That’s the kind of thing you can know in your rational being, but not feel in your bones. Until something like this happens, and you get a peak over the precipice. 


Meaning, I suppose, that I should look back over my life and see what I think. Let’s start with the things I’ve tried to teach my kids. There are 4 golden rules for their teenage years. I chanted these like a mantra to them every time they went out. They go like this: Don’t Drink and Drive; Don’t Get in the Car With a Drinking Driver; If You Have Sex, Use a Condom; If You Do Injectable Narcotics, Don’t Share Needles. Those seem fundamental enough, no? 


When they were younger, we had a dozen or so rules pasted on the refrigerator. I can’t remember them all, but some of them were: wear comfortable shoes; tell the truth (people are always shocked); clean up your own messes; have a sense of humor; and get a cookbook for Dad on holidays. OK, it’s not quite as fundamental as their teenage rules. They had fewer ways to kill themselves then.


I suppose the proof is in the outcome. With 3 bright, successful children, lacking obvious emotional scars and smarter and funnier than I am, I’m content. And it’s all still good advice!


The real facts that come into sharp focus after a bout with life-threatening cancer are, as Morgan Freeman says in outstanding Science Network series Through the Wormhole, “Life is short and time is precious.” I’ve spent my life living, mostly, in the future. The present was just the stepping stone to the next thing coming up. Now? Well, I’m teaching myself to appreciate and understand right now. Because it’s clear that, under many realistic scenarios yet to play out, that may well be all I have. I commend this lesson to you for your own consideration.


Thanks for stopping by. Y’all are helping to keep me alive by reading these blogs. There’s new stuff up at http://docviper.livejournal.com/ . The other two sites, http://theresaturtleinmysoup.blogspot.com/ and http://sustainablebiospheredotnet.blogspot.com/ have yet to be updated from two weeks ago. I will attend to them this week. Thanks again!