It Might Get Messy

Having a serious, progressive, terminal illness, I am starting to realize after years vested in same, comes with an odd affliction I call “Normality Creep”. Normality Creep is a subconscious survival mechanism in which the patient (me) accepts, even embraces, more and more discomfort and dysfunctionality in life as the disease progresses and time passes. Examples from my own case include simple speech. When the medical team was preparing the first couple of treatment plans, I told them emphatically that losing the ability to talk was a deal-breaker. I have made my living via public speaking and teaching. It is one of the very few innate skills I possess…ed. I could not imagine life without speaking, and instructed the doctors to withhold treatment if I was going to lose the ability to talk. I could survive without speaking, but my quality of life would suck and I didn’t want to go down that road.

Eventually the doctors realized they were not going to be able to save my tongue or provide access to my larynx. This despite the repeated application of medical leeches (attached to cute little harnesses in the pharmacy) in an attempt to save a thigh-muscle tongue graft. I was devastated. But was no longer willing to give up on that basis. I got various writing boards and learned to muddle my way through. My “new normal” had passed a hard threshold, and I just let it go. 

Normality Creep simply demonstrates how complex life and dying are. Physically and psychologically, we learn to accept and live with bizarre contretemps as we stumble through life. 

Another abnormality that slipped across the threshold to normality is a persistent, irritating, sometimes painful sore on the right hand side of my tracheostomy tube. Where the tube infrastructure rubs against my throat, the skin degrades and I get a scabby sore that often leaks blood and/or lymph. On the left side, after about a year, the sore seems to have healed permanently. On the right side, it is persistent and continues to rebuild itself whenever I dress it and try to get it under control. I finally asked oncologist Dr. T about this earlier in the week. She said casually “Oh, I think there’s tumor tissue there. You’ll probably not be able to get rid of that blob of inflammation, as it seems to be driven by malignancy.” 

Mind you, this didn’t seem like a casual matter to me. After all, I’m used to dealing with tumors as abstract entities buried deep in my anatomy, where they can sometimes be visualized via remote sensing technology, but generally represent an unseen enemy sniping at my health from hidden places. Sort of like Keanu Reeve’s Constantine, when Satan reaches into his lungs and extracts a large, black tumor from each. Or like high school health class, where films of black and goopy dissected tumors are displayed in an effort to reduce smoking rates among teenagers. 

Thinking I had a unique opportunity to actually see living tumor tissue, I took a forceps and extracted a little chunk of the sore on the right of my throat. Disappointingly, it didn’t look different from every other scabrous sore I’ve ever had. So much for amateur science! 

This did, however, raise the issue of life hiding in plain sight. After all, for years now, I’ve been looking at a hijacked chunk of what used to be me, now taken over by the cancer and so a separate, and distinctly unfriendly, blob of living material. Where else might we find the equivalent of Sherlock Holmes’ purloined letter, sitting on a desk top with dozens of other letters and so not coming to the bad guy’s attention until a new plot device was needed? 

I immediately logged onto the web and started searching comet pictures for little elf-like creatures waving as the lander bounced down to the surface. Alas, no readily visible “hidden life” there. But. Comets have generally been around since the solar system formed, on the order of 4 or 5 billion years ago. And, as we know from dust samples recovered a couple years ago, they contain amino acids! And why does this merit the exclamation point? Because it means that we don’t have to posit the appearance of life from non-life on a planet-by-planet basis. If amino acids—the bricks and mortar of proteins that living things are made of—are chemical artifacts of the formation of the solar system, we don’t need a lengthy time for life and its chemical residues to develop. They’re ubiquitous. And ancient. Life is part of the fabric of the universe, if comets do indeed carry loads of amino acids. 

So, my cancer “hiding” on the skin of my throat is following a 13 billion year old rule book for populating the universe with life. For some reason this comforts me in my illness. The atoms of which I’m comprised were forged in supernovae billions of years ago. When I die, those atoms aren’t going anywhere. They’re simply going to be re-incorporated into the warp and weft (correct usage??) of universal physics, chemistry and biology. I will no longer be “me”, but I’ll be part of many other things, living and non-living, across the universe (hmm….make a good song, you know?). 

And that, as Gandalf makes it, “is a comforting thought”. So…Dig a Pony, everybody. To those of you helping to celebrate my Last Thanksgiving, by being here to share the moment or sending stuff to make that moment easy AND delicious, my eternal gratitude. I’ll give you the Thanksgiving Report next blog entry. Then, that Monday, I go back for more chemotherapy. I’ll report on THAT in the following blog entry. Lots to do in this busy time of year. Except for me. “Doing” in my case means parking my butt in my hospital-style bed and watching the world happen around me. Really, if it wasn’t for the pain and discomfort and inability to sip espresso, this could be a quite pleasant way to wind down my life. But, unfortunately, I gotta keep battling my runaway physiology. Unless they find some fantastic cancer drugs in the ice and dust of comets…. .