Yesterday afternoon, after the outside temperatures had climbed into the low 50s, I went for a short walk. Walking into the brisk breeze, in the dappled shadows of leafless trees, I felt uncomfortably cool, despite wearing a down vest. When I turned around to face the sun with my back to the wind, warming comfort washed over me, instantly erasing that feeling of unpleasant coolness. The sensation was exaggerated, almost like walking into a house heated by a wood-burning fireplace and leaving brutal winter conditions behind. Had the outdoor temperatures been much colder, the adjustment might have seemed too much. Basking in the sunlight and protecting my face from the wind was enough to give me a giddy sense of appreciation for what, in hindsight, was so minor that it makes that sense of elation seem almost absurd. But that is how startled one can feel to experience even brief flashes of unexpected, almost overwhelming, awe.
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My appetite has grown enormously—exponentially might not be too strong a word—since last week, when I began taking my doctor’s prescription for prednisone in response to my COVID-19 diagnosis. Based on the limited research I’ve done on the correlation between appetite and the drug, surging hunger seems a common side-effect of taking prednisone. Fortunately, the decreasing-dosage prednisone regimen (4/day for 3 days, then 3/day for 3 days, then 2/day for 3 days) lasts only nine days. According to several assertions made on health-related websites, I can expect my hunger to return to normal levels soon after I stop taking the pills. I am relatively sure that the pills are largely responsible, too, for a significant boost in my energy over the same period. Breaking a many-months-long routine, I have been napping only rarely and briefly over these several days, too. I wish I could count on a continuation of that increase in energy, but I doubt I can. Today I will have another chemo treatment (number 17?) which, if it is like the others, will sap my energy, my appetite, and my ability for a week or two to tolerate only 7-8 hours of sleep per day.
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Three large scars on my body offer evidence that I have escaped death at least three times. There may have been other occasions when I was spared that personal conclusion, but the scars are visible and obvious reminders. The first one, an almost fully-healed slice about six inches long, is on my lower-right abdomen, where a long piece of my intestines (and my appendix) were removed in 1990, allowing me to survive a severe effect of Crohn’s disease. The second one, from 2004, is easily recognizable as evidence of coronary artery bypass graft surgery, or CABG. A surgeon split my sternum to get access to my heart and arteries, where he bypassed two significantly clogged coronary arteries with living materials harvested from my inner chest wall. The third scar, produced in 2018, curves around the upper right side of my torso, where a thoracic surgeon gained access to my right lung, surgically excising the lower right lung lobe, which had been invaded by a malignant tumor. I suppose the two scars—one on each side of my upper chest—where two jugular Infuse-a-Ports were installed (one in 2019 and one in 2024) might count, as evidence of potentially life-saving surgeries. They were implanted to facilitate access for infusions of chemotherapy drugs to fight lung cancer. All of this is to suggest that my body has been attempting to take its own life for quite a number of years. I believe I was 18 years old when first diagnosed with Crohn’s; 53 years since my body’s first obvious effort to kill me. Had my Selective Service System lottery number been lower, my death might have occurred long, long ago, courtesy of the United States military and/or the Viet Cong. Fortunately for me, my lottery number (which I do not remember) was too high for me to be drafted. I was in my final months of my high school senior year when the drawing for men born in 1953 was held in February 1972; I went to college, instead of Vietnam, where 58,220 of my fellow Americans died in an unnecessary war.
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How much of the “news” we read or hear or see is based on propaganda? How confident should we be that the “enemies” of the U.S. are truly as despicable as we are led to believe? And how certain are we…or should we be…that people who share our political and social philosophies truly understand and have thought critically about the “facts” and how they interpret them? If they are wrong…or lying…or terminally biased…are we just as misguided? When we wonder whether Russian citizens or Chinese citizens or Iranian citizens really and reasonably believe the U.S. is the enemy, should we not wonder whether they wonder the same about us? I have grown increasingly skeptical over the years of politicians of all stripes. Not just politicians, either; the average Joe or Jane must convince me of their honesty before I assume them to be believable. I think all the political philosophies in operation worldwide are, at present, simply expressions of manipulative power-mongering. What we need is not democracy or communism or socialism or authoritarianism or dictatorship, but a new form of governance and citizen participation composed of elements of various political foundations…with healthy doses of anarchism thrown in to keep them all in check. What that new form of governance might take is anyone’s guess; I just think we have been lucky so far that we have not been collectively obliterated by allowing any of the existing forms to become overwhelmingly powerful. But people in general, who often tend to be stupid and arrogant, tend to believe what their minds tell them; we all need to insist of ourselves that we be far more humble, while maintaining high degrees of doubt and curiosity. At least that’s how I feel this morning.
