From Worn to Warm In 240 seconds

08/08/19

I will write in the first person tonight.

I had a light day at work, but it didn’t feel like it.  Laws have changed since I have taken on my position. Now the easy cases are being siphoned away. The people who have two drunk drivings are heading into a different system that puts them back on the road much more quickly. This diversion leaves me only the rough and hardened alcohol and drug dependent folks to deal with.  I am seeing people with 7 drunk driving cases over 29 years with a conviction for methamphetamine and another conviction for criminal sexual conduct while intoxicated for good measure.  Four of these in a day can sap you of your strength. Four of these in a day can leave you empty of soul and heart.

No matter how ragged I feel as I head off to the library to create these blog posts, something usually cheers me.  Sometimes it is the play of the light across the landscape.  Thomas Hart Benton and Edward Hopper come to my mind when I look up into these midwestern trees.  Sometimes it is the little fruits of a summer of nurture that make me smile.  Like Guy Clark said, “There are only two things that money can’t buy, true love and home grown tomatoes”. A dose of light, a splash of the color red and I am energized again.

While these things cheer me they do not take away from the reality that I have a serious disease and that I must deal with it.  Now, having made a decision to commit to surgery, I have to wait again.  Now, having made a commitment to work with a new surgeon, I have to wait again.  Really it took all I could muster to call the phone number of the new doctor yesterday.  To have the response be, “We will put you on his callback list for next week,” was deflating. When you have cancer you want things to be immediate.

I don’t have the ‘get this out of me urgency’ I did with the prostate cancer.  What I have is an urgency for the pain I know is coming to be over.  What I have is the need for an organized path that I will follow.  Yes, I know we don’t get to live life like it is a mathematical formula, but how I long for something approaching 1 +1 = 2 in my life right now.