a thousand things have happened

PART 1

I hate to begin with such melodrama.

But it is almost 2 years ago. And I am lying in a bed. A recovery room. I am remembering what they said I would forget. Remembering the drug they gave me that was supposed to make me forget. The camera going into my nose. Into my lung. The video screen showing the black and red tissue. The discussions of the doctors in Mandarin. Very scientific. Very professional.

Lying there, I know that this next moment is going to go by slow. And I want it over and on to the next so bad.. And actually, because I am this kind of person, I would cut my losses and end time right here if I could. Deborah is there and the handsome man squats down and leans his forearm across the hospital bed bar. He rests his chin on his fists and says, it looks like cancer. I am sorry.

I think that Deborah cries but I can’t really remember.

There is a thing that modern medicine can do that we don’t really talk about. Drugs.  Make you almost dead and bring you back to life. Make you forget. Make you believe that you are dreaming. Make you dream. Give you nightmares.

I can’t really remember if that moment happened or if I dreamt it. I will tell you that I think of it almost daily. And almost daily it makes my heart pound.

And then there are a thousand ways to think of each thing. So a million thoughts and only 690 days to think them which averages out to about 1,449 thoughts a day or so and unfortunately i have been thinking crooked about so much of it.

I keep thinking, first of all, that i am outside of a Living life. Okay, here’s what you don’t know:  there is a moving sidewalk under your feet- living people. A conveyance you ride and you don’t even know. Carrying on as if it all makes sense, and everything is in order and if it weren’t you would just know, like how a hound dog will growl before an alien invasion. So you do your laundry and consider your vacations in August when it is only February.

And I find this offensive.

So there was that moment that violented me off the living sidewalk. It felt so personal. I got spanked like that once before. Waiting in line the last day of  3rd grade, out on the “fun day” field. talking. we were all talking. But i was easiest to reach. And ms sanguin grabbed my arm just above the elbow and  slapped me in the ass hard. And kept moving to the front of the line. And we all flush and get silent. A quick violence, to ready us for the spoon relay.

So the pulmonologist (would I know that if it were a dream?) does his lean-down move and suddenly I am stationary. i am behind glass. And I am watching you people move on without me.

Save yourselves I will only slow you down.

Of course by now, you must realize that this is not true. That really my definition of life was narrow and ill-informed. In movies, in which, I am sorry to say, I received most of my emotional education, a person is either dying bravely of some illness or is bravely fighting back and winning. Dissolve to the montage scene: Taking supplements, putting one slippered foot to the floor…and trying again. Pushing ahead because they just know things. In movies the sick just know things. The dying just know things. And they are comforted by them. And then they go about comforting others. They are brimming with knowledge and peace.

i kinda hate them.

As I understand it I had 3 months to live. I thought that’s how lung cancer worked. Before the official diagnosis a doctor said if A then B, maybe 1 or 2 years. After which I asked the doctors not to make prognostications. I couldn’t understand how it would help me to know. And also, I didn’t want any more News. I didn’t want any more announcements. There had been three so far and I was done. This creates a weird relationship with your doctors. It feels like they are bursting with the knowledge and it takes a lot out of them not to scream “you’re going to die soon!”. I watch them carefully for signs of wear in the seams. I wouldn’t be surprised if it caused them internal problems.

Anyway, the point here to Part 1 is that I am not only still alive, But I am still living. And not just still living, but living. I am living. And there is a new condition in this life but it is exactly like life. Not like the life I had before but like the life millions of people have had. The life in which the threat of mortality is very present and real. So yes, it is weird to feel the heat of a truncated future. An unknown clearance of days upon which to paint pretty pictures. Of course, you know what I will say next- None of us know. And I am trying to remember that I am as equally and squarely in the saddle as any. Riding high upon the conveyance of life. Perhaps I am a bit more morose. A little too contemplative. Easily overwhelmed. Some days I only manage to think on maybe a thousand things. Least of which is my August vacation.

Coming soon, part 2. what fear is this? Cancer causes mental illness