In Which The Narcissist Sets Off an Explosion of Unanticipated Existential Angst

In Which The Narcissist Sets Off an Explosion of Unanticipated Existential Angst

The scene is this, two women mid to late thirties sit in a nondescript beige break room at the back of a large, well very large suite in a strip mall.  On either side of a battered old kitchen table from the 1980s they burn the 15 minutes of their break.

These two women are clerks for the agency that issues titles and tags for vehicles.  Their day are spent arguing about who can sign what form legitimately and what fees must be charged.  Each of them is constantly monitored by cameras positioned behind their work stations. Any mistake or malfeasance will  be captured and analyzed off a DVD.

These two are good people.  Each works hard.  Both clearly care for other people.  They are diligent and  conscientious in their work.  Neither has had a performance tickets in years. Still,  their managers constantly fuck with their breaks and their weekly schedules.  If you were to watch them closely you would think they were the epitome of stoic resolve and the ideal of what a dedicated worker is supposed to be. They are kind people. Each of them wants to help.

As they sit scrolling through Twitter, Facebook and texts about one pot meals a coworker enters the room.  Both of them like their coworker.  He has a sense of humor, but its somewhat crude and often fill his remarks with double entendres.  But for the most part he is usually smiling and has a joke or a self effacing story to tell.  They like him or at least they don’t dislike him.

Last week they learned that their coworker has come down with renal cancer.  Both of them had heard his stories about his prior surgeries for prostate cancer, a problematic gallbladder and also appendicitis.  To hear him tell it each of these events was hilarious.  But both of them have had diagnoses and medical procedures that were problematic and painful.  In each of their minds they are worried about their work friend and his mental state

So this day as he walks in to pour himself a cup of black coffee-black decaf coffee, they know his cardiologist has ruled out the real stuff, (yeah this guy over shares) they ask him how he is doing. The man is due for major surgery in a month and a week; he will be losing part of his kidney.  Each of them worries that his emotional state may be growing more fragile.  The threat of major surgery has a nasty way of unnerving even the strongest of souls.

Dressed in his bow tie and suspenders, wearing his pink and blue plaid shirt the man responds. “Now if you are asking me about how I am feeling about my surgery, you know, am I anxious the answer is no.   I have a month to wait. Because of that  I have just put all my nerves about being cut open  in a box in the back of my mind. I will not think about the surgery and the pain until probably about a week before the event.  I have been through so many surgeries at this point, I don’t want to contemplate the upcoming pain until I have to.”

Both of the women nod and one of the says, “That is a good attitude; the best attitude.” The man smiles.

He then continues, “ Now if you are asking me about my overriding fear that comes to me late at night when I am trying to sleep that I know I am going to die and that I am not sure if any of this, life, religion, good works, bad works means anything at all and we are just heading into the abyss, into entropy, well that hasn’t hit me in a bit.  I mean when I was ten years old I had a dream that both of my parents were killed in an accident in my father’s 1965 Mustang and when I awoke I realized none of us gets out of here alive.  I mean I have answered altar calls, I have read Buddhist scriptures, I have taken hallucinogenic drugs to drive this fear way but to no avail.  I have taken college course on metaphysics to see if that would drive the black nothingness back. Still,  every so often that raw fear of impending oblivion hits.  Eh, that hasn’t happened in a bit.”

Almost in unison the two women said, “You need to get on medications”.  With that the younger of the two of them (by a few years), began to tell how 10 years ago or so she came to the same realization and that it was at the edge of absolutely driving her nuts.  She talked about the cold sweat she experienced in the middle of the night and the nausea that constantly plagued her when she came back to this idea.  She then rattled off a list of medications to try and finally offered the one up that seemed to work for her.  She said, “Meds help.  You just can’t leave the door to those thoughts open too long.”

The other woman began to describe how paralyzing the fear was when she came to the same realization.  She talked about being rendered almost immobile from the thoughts.  She opined that she was not sure she would be able to go on after the waves of existential fear (she didn’t use the word existential) rolled over her. They she offered that you just had to find the right medication.

The man was shocked.  The women were shocked.  It seemed as if they never realized that they were not the only people who felt lost in the world.  None of them had really though out that others felt bracketed in the hours between the forceps and the shroud. It came in a moment of unvarnished reality where all the defenses we usually hold in place fell down.  The man had to run off for a minor task and when he returned the women were still talking about what had triggered their dive into this endless well of thought.  The man wondered if they had read Camus.

Later in the day the man came back to the room.  It was awkward.  The emotional quality was much like  running into someone you somehow slid into a sexual union with quickly and unexpectedly and then you meet them a day or two later.  You are not sure if you should talk the sex, or anything that happened the other night or whether it is better to pretend that it just didn’t happen.This time the three of them talked about the weekend weather forecast.

Opening up that you suffer the great fear that this is all without meaning or purpose, that life is a fluke, and that entropy wins, is about as raw and naked as a human soul gets.  The conversation those three shared was probably more intimate that ninety five percent of the one night stands in this sordid old world of ours.

You Got This

There are three phrases you hear again and again when you tell someone you have cancer.  They are, “You’ll be fine” or “Everything will be okay”, or “You got this.” Clearly there is hope and love in each of these statements.  And God thank you for every single soul that has uttered them since I decided to just let it hang out that I have renal cancer.

For stretches I can accept these statements as true.  But then the thoughts of what if crawl into my mind.  In my job I have met so many people that doctors have promised the world and delivered only ashes to.  Yeah there are a great deal of what ifs that abound when you are facing down surgery.

But I am opting to stay with the line that says these people and my doctor are correct.  Life has been good to me so far.  I want more of these joyous breaths. Thank you to all of you who have uttered these phrases.  

The Flower Man

I offer the above flower as an act of contrition for what we as Americans have become.  I loath our (p)Resident.  I don’t know if he actually won the election but that is water under the dam.  Right now we have to save our country from its own worst tendencies.  The racism, the homophobia and xenophobia are just staining our souls, perhaps indelibly. The merciless redistribution of wealth is just horrid.

Oh don’t go on about how Obama and Clinton were disasters too.  They were.  But they did not advance the cause of fascism and the cult of personality as the man who holds the chair they once did.  His unmitigated disdain for long held international relationships, the disavowal of treaties and compacts, the unilateralism, well these are the moves that reflect a citizenry who have given up on their duties.

I have given up talking.  You either believe the man is returning us to an America that was strong and potent and just, or you believe he is all in for the monied and the white and the Christian.  When I say these things out loud people react viscerally.  Some say yeah and some say you sonofabitch.  I just can’t take it.

Most days I try to post a picture of a flower and a comment that encourages or brings a laugh.  I want to see people as people. It is all I can do given the schism between the Trump supporters and the people I believe are focused on democracy first.  

Take a moment with a flower.  Left or right it doesn’t matter.  What matter is this fragile world, this fragile set of interwoven lives that we must protect. 

Blood and Alcohol are the Trump Cards Today

Today was a no mostly thought of cancer day.  I spent the day at a seminar learning, well actually confirming learning already done, about alcohol absorption. I mean the mechanics of alcohol metabolizing play a key role in my job.  Thus knowing how quickly after one stops ingesting alcohol the blood alcohol level peaks and knowing the rate at which alcohol leaves the body are key issues.  Alcohol leaves most bodies at about .018 BAC an hour.  But based on other factors it can leave the body at as slow a rate at .012 and as fast a rate as .030 an hour.  I can see your eyes glazing over. But to me this stuff is important.

Next week will be a big week.  Ann Arbor on Friday for a second opinion.  Detroit on Saturday for a concert.  I will go from facing the music to being transported by the music.  Decisions will be made soon.

Of course during the seminar I was attending I got two phone calls.  One was from a friend who is meeting me at this concert.  The second was from a pharmacist at U of M.  I have no idea what either of these calls were about.  I tried to call the pharmacist back but I sat on hold for 1/2 hour.  So much from the quick response time from U of M.  Carl was good but I am not sure it that translates across the system.

A Digression Into Philosophy

When it comes to the underpinnings of philosophy, I guess I’m on board with Descartes. Most commonly his primephilosophical premise is translated as, “I think therefore I am”. From my perspective this really doesn’t convey the essence of what he is saying. I have seen several other iterations of this phrase. One that has stuck is something along the line, “Because this thought process is in some manner occurring, therefore something must exist”. I get that. I accept that as a starting point.

Because there is even a question floating around in the ether somewhere, the mere existence of that question means there must be some form of sentient being that exists. All human existence may in fact be the dream of a giant sleeping on a hill in a world or universe which we could never comprehend, but something, some life, must be there to generate activity. 

So, accepting as a starting point that there is existence, I adopt the pragmatist stance as to the rest of the questions of reality. What I see and who am I seeing are real and not simply the constructs of the Giant’s mind or my own mind. For me I don’t have to dig into the whole, “Are you and everyone else just a figment of my mind”, ala Leibnitz.  The whole monad thing doesn’t work for me.  The table is a table.  The chair is a chair.  Sex is sex.

What I find more interesting, and more challenging is the issue of duality.  Do we have a soul?  Is there a life essence that is attached to our skin suits invisible to our eyes and undetectable to our instruments of discovery, that continues forever? Perhaps something like unseen radiation that has always been there but not measured or identified until the last century and a half of human history.  Those 17th and 18th century folks really worked doggedly to either prove or disprove the soul. Don’t think either side really prevailed. And when you talk about the soul you move from metaphysics into moral philosophy.  If there is duality you must address the problem of the existence of evil.

Accepting existence, I can move on to think on other more important questions in this world I inhabit. Me personally I think the questions that must be addressed right now on our Trump/Johnson world are primarily questions on moral philosophy and ethical philosophy. We humans must drill down and answer to ourselves what is good and right at the same time identifying what is not good and what is not ethical. Every single moment of every single day, because of these men, we are faced with choices that require decisions about propriety and goodness and what our efforts should be to ameliorate the evil these men are spreading. The thing is an answer to these questions is never, and I mean, never easy or clear.

And Behind This Door is Doctor #4

Doctors 2,3 and 4.

Like any good cancer victim facing the specter of cutting and chopping, and the pain and agony that is associated with surgery, I am seeking a second opinion..  I called my PCP immediately after the diagnosis and discussed my options.  Our talk ranged from the Mayo Clinic to Sloan-Kettering to the Cleveland Clinic and then to U of M.  He rattled off a few more that had specialties in different kinds of cancer.

After mulling it over I decided to go with U of M.  Hey, currently the diagnosis is that the cancer is small and slow growing.  U of M has enough credibility in medicine and in oncology that balancing distance and cost it won out.

Next came finding a doctor.  I immediately put feelers out to a group that we shall call “ladies in the know”.  In our community there is a grapevine of people, not necessarily all women, who are tied in to the neural net of the community.  They know who had what, who did what, where they did it and why.  The answer didn’t take long.  A name had cropped up a couple of times as the go to person for urological oncology.

I called my doctor.  He called U of M.  We waited.

Two days ago I got a call from a 734 number.  Ann Arbor is a city in the 734 code.  A calm voice began to speak.  “Is this Rufus.  Rufus I am Carl, I am the new patient specialist with the U of M urological oncology department.  We have received a referral from your doctor to see Doctor 2.  Is there a special reason you want to see Doctor 2?”

Quickly I responded.  I told Carl that I had renal cancer and that two separate people in my social circle had been treated by him with great results and glowing reviews.  Carl asked me, “Have you been told anything about your cancer?” I responded with what I have shared with you, I have Stage 1 cancer that is slow growing.  Carl was very precise, “Rufus you are simply not sick enough to see Doctor 2.  He specializes in advanced cancers that are aggressive and spreading.”  I tried to plead with Carl but he was the great curtain hanging before the Wizard.

Carl tried to throw me a bone.  “Rufus Doctor 3 has an opening next week.”  Carl implied Doctor 3 was the pro from Dover for tumors simply within the kidney.  But Carl’s position on whether Doctor 3 was appropriate for me would change.  Carl asked me how big my tumor was.  I volunteered it was about a centimeter by ½ centimeters per what Doctor 1 had told me.  Carl then offered, “Doctor 3 has recently changed his guidelines.  He will only see patients with tumors in excess of 4 centimeters.   Let me see.”  Carl then offered me an appointment on 08-02-19 with Doctor 4.

I asked Carl for the guy’s bona fides. Carl indicated that Doctor 4 had been at Sloan Kettering for 15 years and came to U of M 3 years ago to become part of the growing and specialized urological oncology department.  I assented.

Carl then in his ever pleasant voice began to explain the process.  There would be forms to fill out.  He would email them to me.  I would have to sign two of them and sent them back.  These would allow Doctor 4 to see all my slides and scans and reports before I arrived for my appointment. Next I would have to fill out a very specific release so that the Doctor and his staff could talk to the people of my choosing.  Finally there would be a 10 page form detailed every medical malady I had ever been burdened by, and all medications legit and otherwise I was using.  He told me he would be e-mailing these immediately.

Carl was true to his word.  He sent me 10 documents. Some were maps and directions.  One was the itinerary of my visit.  The rest were the forms.  I called Carl back and as God is my witness he answered the number he had given me and resolved my question about a couple of boxes and whether they had to be checked or not.

I have finished the forms.  I have the ones I have to hand deliver in my purse.  I have sent off my e-mail to my boss requesting time off next Friday for this visit.  My stomach is churning.  I know I have cancer, I just don’t want it to be any worse than I have already been led to believe it is.  Tomorrow I will Google Doctor 4 and check all the licensing databases and the Washtenaw Circuit Court filings on the dude.  I will do my homework.

On Saturday, the next night after the second opinion, I am headed off to Detroit to see Bryan Ferry perform all of the Roxy Music disc Avalon.  I will be catching up with an old friend at the Fox Theatre in Detroit both for food and the show. And then two days latter I will be celebrating my wife hitting retirement age.  Yeah, a whole lot is going on.  My hope is that Bryan Ferry can distract both my wife and I for a few moments.

Waiting for Doctor #1

Doctor #1 or Dr. M as I Refer to Him.

12 years ago my PCP (Primary Care Physician) noticed a slight increase in my PSA (Prostate Specific Antigen).  Based on a hunch he sent me to a urologist for a follow up.  With referral slip in hand I headed off to meet my new comrade in the cause we shall call “Keeping Rufus Alive”.

Dr. M was a shorter man.  He was of Arabic descent and had a perma-tan.  As our years together would reveal to me, he liked the ocean and he liked beaches.  Dr. M was confident but not cocky.  When he looked at my PSA change he gave me about even odds that I was dealing with something that was just aggravating my prostate.  Still, we had to check given that I was so young and all, a mere 50.  Men don’t get prostate cancer at 50. Testing would happen quickly.

Testing required I be sodomized by a staple gun in the shape of a dildo.  The results came back ambiguous.  According to the lab they might be inflammation but then again they might be symptomatic of prostate cancer.  Dr. M stated that the appropriate course of action was that I wait a short while to see if the inflammation resolved.  In a very knowing voice he told me that we would again do the anal probe in a few months.  To quote a script by John Sayles, “I did not ask for the anal probe.”  Say that six times with different inflections, emphatic, timid matter of fact, fearful, sorrowful and perhaps shocked.

In three months time there I was again on the examination table listening to the pop, pop, pop of the prongs taking flesh from my jizz generator.  Again confident but not cocky Dr. M told me we would have the results in a few days.  He told me he would call as soon as he knew.  This time he didn’t tell me he was sending the samples to Johns Hopkins for review.

True to his word he called 5 days later on a Monday morning at about 8:45 a.m.  He was calm but very direct, “You have prostate cancer and from my perspective given your age the best possible course of action is to remove the prostate.”  I was shell shocked.  I was looking for other answers.  I went to a noted local oncologist who looked at the results.  He too was Arab.  He did not hesitate to tell me that with these results at age fifty I had to have my prostate out.

For twelve years now I have followed up with Dr. M.  My PSA has remained nil.  After a decade you get told it isn’t coming back. For each visit I would wait for him by sitting on the exam table in the lotus position.  I find it more comfortable that the chairs they wedge in those rooms.  Each visit we would talk about Arab food.  Kibbie rules.  Each visit he would be supportive and understanding.

Taking the prostate out changes the places of pieces and parts of you innards.  Things shift.  Your penis shrinks a tad.  Damn miserable stuff.  Over time you lose a little muscle control front and back.  Yeah, I know too much info, but it is what it is.

One of the things I noticed in the past two to three years was that my bladder region has gotten tender.  Twice now Dr. M has run the camera up my penis, yes it is not very pleasant.  Twice the samples taken by this device from inside my bladder came back negative for cancer.

At Dr. M’s behest I was sent for therapy.  This involved sphincter squeezing exercises.  It involved a giant rubber band and a small rubber ball.  Finally it involved both exterior and interior massages.  Yeah, you got that right.  I had a fifty something woman using one of her gloved digits to massage the interior of my posterior.  Thing was it helped.  I mean I am still not gay but that digit thing made my bladder feel better for a couple of weeks.

Despite doing all the rubber band stretches and the rubber ball between my knees compressions, I still have an agitated bladder.  Dr. M decided to look a bit further to see if there was any structural reason for this, i.e., a tumor or something.  I was shuffled off for a CAT scan and well if you have been reading along you know the results.

What was different this time was that the personal touch of Doc M had changed a little.  After the CAT scan I got a call within two or three hours telling me I needed a biopsy.  This call came from a nurse, not from Doc M.

I got the biopsy and good old Dr. S who drilled in my kidney, the inerventional radiologist told me the results would come in 7-10 days.  Nyah.  The biopsy was on a Tuesday, two days later I got a call from Dr. M’s assistant asking me if I could make a 4:45 pm appointment with the doctor on Friday.

What freakin’ self respecting doctor is setting appointments on Friday afternoon in the height of summer?  I am going to attach a clip below, it is the ending to the movie A Serious Man.  The movie is very Jewish but watch it even if that particular experiential set is different from your own.  Crucial to understanding my reaction to the call for a quick appointment  is the part where the doctor in the movie calls the aspiring college professor. You need to see this to have an understanding of how terrorized I was. https://youtu.be/2Qk4H7yfwPg

To be called in on a Friday I was sure I had to be toast. (I still may very well be but that we will find out as time progresses now won’t we reader?) For 24 hours my guts churned, my mind raced and my toes sweated.  I was emotionally and physically drained by the time I reached Doc M’s office.

Sitting with my wife in the examination room the door opened.  The good doctor came in smiled a gentle smile and in a very matter of fact tone told me I have renal cancer.  He showed me the film and he told things like it was stage 1 and it was slow moving.  His advice is to remove some of the kidney but not all of it.  We will again use the DaVinci machine.

Why did he call me in on a Friday at 4:45 p.m., well because he knew me and he knew how worried I would be.  He wanted to sort out the good news from the bad and calm me down a bit.  Doctor M is a good man, the field of Urology will lose a good practitioner when he retires in December.  I asked him if he had ever seen a Serious Man.  He hadn’t. Kind of wish he had.

Grasping for the Light at the End of the Day

As I was walking to the library this evening the air was cooler than yesterday at the same time.  We had a brief but heavy thundershower early and it seemed to have both lowered the temperature and wrung the moisture out of the air. My passing through the neighborhood came at about 8:25 PM. Part way on my eight minute walk I caught a glimpse of light playing upon a stop sign. The angle of the sun illuminated the stop sign creating an almost aura like effort around the red and white octagon.

Quickly, well almost immediately I pulled out my phone. Over a minute I took a good 8 to 10 photographs of the glowing stop sign. One can never catch the golden light at the end of the day. Me, I try and I try but it never works out. Sometimes I get just a hint of what the reality of what I saw was. Sometimes if you play with the filters in the phone might get 80% of the way there. But the crucial thing is you never get there.

Know this there is no program on any phone, nor any computer, which will actually grab what your eye sees.  Nothing will ever capture the image on your retina perfectly.  Nothing will ever record it perfectly. I think that reality is why we should live life without any anxiety about the historical record, about memorializing the things we see in our passages. There is beauty that we can observe on an individual basis and individually is the only way we can observe it. What I think is incredibly important is that we try and catch the light at the end of the day.

The Fear Grenade

Today’s topic is a simple one, fear. When you receive a diagnosis that you have cancer in any form, there is fear. We, all those with a diagnosis have it.  Each of us has watched friends battle cancer, very valiantly. We have seen many of them succumb. As soon as the nurse at the facility performing the CAT scan Said to me, your doctor will call you perhaps today, I knew I was in trouble. I have never heard a lab tech give a definitive response after a benign test.  When the doctor’s nurse called later in the afternoon and said I had a tumor in my left kidney I was beside myself.

 Remind you I am not a newbie to this rodeo. 25 years ago, I was told that I probably had lung cancer. It took two or three weeks to get that resolved. During that time, I was crying and praying and nauseous and frightened out of my mind. I think I lost 10% of my bodyweight in sweat over those days. Turned out, it was just some pigeon shit I had inhaled 20 years earlier that had been encapsulated by my body as protective mechanisms for my lung. The phrase, sigh of relief, just doesn’t begin to cover it.

The next time I experienced this roller coaster was about 12 years ago my doctor noticed an uptick in my PSA. It didn’t even warrant further inquiry according to the standards of the time, but he was suspicious.  I was sodomized by the biopsy probe and received a call that simply said, “You have cancer”  

In the words of Spinal Tap my fear turned up to 11. The fear of prostate cancer is very visceral and two pronged. There are two fears when you’re diagnosed with prostate cancer. You are afraid that either you will die or that you’ll be on able to fuck again. In my personal experience the latter fear is the predominant one.

It took about a month to get around to the surgery It was only in the final week of waiting for the knife when the fear of pain or perhaps misadventure during the surgery took hold. But damn, it took hold. It shook me to my very core that I might die on the operating table. For the 10 days prior to the surgery I was sweating, my hands were shaking, I was losing weight and who knows my gums were probably bleeding.

I made it through the wrenching removal of my goo generator, and I am at a decade and two years cancer free from prostate cancer.  Of course, every year when it was time for my annual checkup, I grow nauseous and nervous and afraid that this would be the year they would find the recurrence of the prostate cancer. But it hasn’t happened.

This time I was here feeling some bladder irritation. I have twice now had them run the camera up the inside of my penis (not very pleasant indeed thank you very much) and take samples from inside my bladder. I wasn’t afraid either of those times. Neither of those times did they find cancer. But the fact that I kept feeling bladder irritation lead to a CAT scan.

The CAT scan found a small lump inside my left kidney. Nobody was looking for it, but there it was. The small lump lead to a biopsy.  The biopsy lead to a diagnosis of a slow growing stage one renal cancer and the need to have part or all my kidney removed. 

The fear is here again, and it is as real as I have ever felt fear.  I made the mistake while trying to figure out how the biopsy would work to click on one of the Web MD links. It took me to very informative site about how they would drill into my kidney. I also made the mistake of clicking on another hyperlink. Suddenly, I was looking at survival rates for renal cancer patients. The last time I had to vomit and empty my bowels at the same time I have the flu. This was fear on steroids.

 I met with the doctor shortly thereafter. The doc focused on encouraging me by telling of the cancer was small slow growing and he kept emphasizing stage one. “This is survivable”, he said.

Like any good patient facing major surgery I am seeking out a second opinion. And in seeking that opinion I must coordinate with my primary care doctor who I love and respect greatly. And in telling me how to prep for this visit he was talking about all the documents and things I had to gather, stuff for the next physician. It was then he made the offhand comment about really wanting to make sure we know that this was slow-moving and stage one. What?  Doctor one could be wrong? ARRRGGGH.

Boom, the fear was back.  However, don’t worry it is manageable. For most of the day I put the fear into a little box and stick it on a shelf in the back of my mind. Mostly, I throw myself into the activities of my everyday work life. If it my mind is active the fear does not play a trump card impacting my activity. But late at night when I’m lying in bed trying to sleep, the thought of what happens next in my life always pulls the string that opens the door leaving me looking face-to-face at the fear of cancer.

Perhaps other people have very different experiences of this. I am assuming some do. But for me this is how the term, “you may have cancer” pulls the pen on the fear grenade.

 

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Talking, it is What We Do

Just a thought.  I have been keeping this journal/blog/opinion space for 11 years now.  In reality it has not been a constant thing for me.  However, I have always returned here to spread my thoughts out.  Sometimes my finished ideas have been raw.  Sometimes, probably most times they have been nostalgic.Other times they have been wrongheaded.

But I keep coming back.  I enjoy putting words to paper.  I am not a deep thinker, I am just an average bloke.  But for over seven hundred times I have scribbled a few words onto  a scrap of electronic paper. I have then tied it to a rock called and blog post.  Finally with all my might I have thrown that missile through the wall of reality that separates you from me.

I have loved doing this.  When I put my heart and soul into a long piece, and it feels like I wrote something that is good, there is a feeling of joy I get.  I come from a long oral tradition, storytellers surrounded me as a youth.  I immersed myself in the storytellers of my world, the essayists, the talking heads on TV and people sitting beside me on the bus having that all too public phone call. I have absorbed it all and I want more.

We continue to exist as long as we communicate, as long as we hear and respond.  There will be more posts, not less.

Waiting for the Surgeon or Someone Similar

Cancer.  You have cancer. You have cancer again, but it is a different cancer and it is in a different place.  Still, just like last time we are going to have to cut it out.  Just like last time we will be putting you under anesthesia  and carving up your body.  Just like last time you will hurt for a long, long time. But hey, it looks like we caught it early.

Fuck.  Double Fuck.

My doctor said that I was entitled to a rebate on my body.  Over the years he has treated me it has come to light that I am a specimen of extraordinary defects.  No I am not just talking about the moral ones.  I have a caved in ribcage, I had a heart conduction problem, I have nystagmus, I have arches that would be the envy of Mr.Eiffel of the tower fame.  And the list goes on from there.  A bad appendix, a bad gall bladder, a bad prostate and now a troublesome kidney.

In about a month’s time they will wrench some part of my left kidney out of my body.  If all goes well I will be in recovery mode for about a month.  Thing was they were not even looking for it.  They were looking for something with my bladder and viola, Mr. T. you have renal cancer.

Triple Fuck.

People ask me how am I feeling.  Truth be told I feel not a whit different than I felt the day before the ominous CAT scan that has placed me on this road of fear and imminent pain.  I am still walking five miles a day.  I still am taking photographs of flowers. I am still thinking about what meaning we can take from the natural world, as we live in this time of darkness in all things human made.

In five months, eighteen days I will cease working at my 9 to 5 job.  In six months I will set out on a global adventure.   This assumes all goes well on 09/09/19 and afterwards. Am I mentally different? Not really is the answer that comes to mind.  I am basically in a state of suspended life right now.  Until I deal with the cancer, I cannot take another step forward.  Life goes on, at least for a time.  I will keep posting about what is going on.

I do note that the next step is a second opinion.  I will know when that is soon.  Keep checking back I will keep you informed.