It Might Get Messy

For my entire life, I’ve had a nagging feeling that if only I could find a way to give myself a more creative imagination, I would be dangerously productive of art, music, prose, poetry, and science. The problem, as near as I could diagnose, was a lack of time for unfettered (what the hell does “unfettered” mean? Lemme pull up some online dictionary here...OK, it means to “release from fetters” [duh]…and “fetters” are “a chain or shackle placed on the feet”…making the analogy, I think, acceptable if not fully apposite… (and “apposite” means “suitable, well adapted, pertinent, relevant, apt”…) (and “apt” means...SLAP!! WHACK!!...thanks, I…I needed that. I’m better now. Really. Better…) thinking. 

Well, now I actually have the time for unfettered thinking that I’ve craved for much of my adult life. 

And it turns out I was right. Or, at least, partially right. I have indeed improved my creativity, in a shocking variety of ways. However, now my OTHER overarching intellectual deficiency, which I’ve also struggled for a lifetime to (unsuccessfully) overcome, kicks in. I have such a pitiful lack of skills or talent in any and all expressive media that I am unable to convert my freshly liberated and expansive creativity into any useful product.

Sigh. You think, from reading waiting-room brochures, magazines, and books, uplifting tales about how having advanced-stage cancer and coming two breaths from death is “the best thing that can happen to you”, that you’re actually going to be a different, better person when you stagger out of the Stargate, bloody and wounded. Different…better… . 

But the sad truth, like so many things in life, is mundane. You’re actually the same person you were on the other side of the galaxy. Wounded. Bloody. But the same.

Dammit. 

But that’s not why we’re here. We’re here because I don’t think people are sufficiently worried about that rock on Mars that suddenly appeared, two weeks later, in a spot that lacked said rock in an earlier photo. Of course, there’s the usual bloated panic from the “chariots of the gods” people. You can entertain yourself for hours with their detailed deconstruction of this and other photos from the Mars landers at http://www.thelivingmoon.com/46_mike_singh/index.html . 

But this “now you see it” rock photo has some actual disturbing aspects. First, those rover vehicles move very slowly, their wheels turn at a creeping pace. Making the NASA technical explanation—that somehow the rover drop-kicked that chunk onto the boulder in the photo frame—completely untenable. Also, if you look at the “before” photo, you see a tidy little triangular sculpting on the boulder. A sculpting that, in the “after” photo, fits the drop-kicked fragment perfectly, like a muffin nestling into the pocket of a nonstick muffin baking pan. Which leaves us with only scary and completely untenable explanations for the incident. 

But that’s not why…oh, wait, yes, that is why we’re here. I saw Dr. S, my “palliative care” specialist. Dr. S’ task is to find a way for my present self to slip comfortably into an acceptable quality-of-life slot out here in the universe at large. Dr. S is in an uncomfortable professional position. He had no input to the treatment plans and implementation that yielded my current, uncomfortable status. Now he’s charged with making a Tab A (me) fit into a Slot B (niche in the functioning biosphere) restroactively and with  a limited tool kit. 

Basically, his toolkit consists of drugs. If he can find a pharmaceutical regime that balances the diverse psychological and physical impairments left in the wake of my disease and treatment against the physical and intellectual parameters that define an acceptable quality-of-life for me, he will have done his job. 

It’s a struggle. My “new normal”, as surgeon Dr. H calls it, is inherently uncomfortable and constraining. Drugs capable of massaging my physical being into at least a marginal functional status all have side effects ranging from dreary to dangerous. But we’re getting there. After months of experimentation with the wacky array of pharmaceuticals nominally applicable to one or more of my chronic symptoms, we seem to have hit on a viable tactical solution.

In the morning, I take a heavy dose of dilaudid to suppress nagging soreness in my head and neck, an antinausea tablet that, coupled with a dose of THC, lets me ingest sufficient calories, and just enough dry-out drugs like Benadryl to let me function but not put me to sleep. In the evening, I take a much larger diversity and dose of dry-out drugs so I don’t drown in my sleep, and the anti-depressant and anti-anxiety drugs that let me maintain my personality at some level of productive functioning. I also take melatonin, which I’ve been doing routinely now for 15 years and a second dose of THC. This suite of medicaments allows me to relax and sleep soundly despite having to prop myself up to near-vertical so the copious mucous produced in my oral cavity and throat slip mostly down my gastrointestinal tract and not my airway. 

This regimen makes me quite comfortable, and allows me to be productive. Of course, it does NOT make me more imaginative or creative. I’m afraid those impairments can only be mitigated the old-fashioned way, via intense and hard work. 

So there it is. I’m alive, I have drugs that allow me to be functional, and I’m not grossly uncomfortable. Given the massive devastation wrought by radiation and surgery, that’s about the best I can expect. 

Hopefully it will let me live long enough to see the photo of that Mars rock picking  itself up and waving at the camera on the rover. A worthy objective for my rather constrained life.

Remember that I love you all. Remember to let the remarkable experience of living wash into your consciousness a couple times a day. And most of all, rock on. Just because we can!