We are here and it is now.
Further than that,
all human knowledge
is moonshine.~ H. L. Mencken ~
I am not quite sure what to expect this morning, when one or more representatives of Arkansas Hospice will come to the house to educate me. The visit, I assume, probably will be purely informative; clarifying for me the concepts of hospice and palliative care. Having arranged for both levels of care for my late wife in her final days, I think I have a reasonably good understanding of the concept. However, I was in a state of shock and confusion during the waning weeks and days of the five-month period between her initial hospitalization and her transfer to in-patient hospice care. My “reasonably good understanding” might have been labeled “bewildered denial” by the doctors and nurses and mental health professionals who surrounded us during those wretched months-long moments. Still, I am familiar with—and deeply support—the notion of minimizing patients’ pain and discomfort when the approaching outcome of those conditions is inarguable. Prolonging patients’ physical pain and stoking their unjustifiable emotional hope is, in my opinion, the epitome of selfish cruelty. That having been said, though, I have not been given a time-dependent prognosis…so, it may be a bit early to begin a process that’s equivalent to “picking out a coffin.” But I am operating in the dark; I may be alone in my ignorance of what “everybody knows.” The situation may echo the one in which my wife’s surgeon, thinking I already had been told the results of the biopsy of her breast tumor, said to me, “This (referring to my wife’s diagnosis) is a horrible disease. All we can do is to do our best to try to win the next battle so we do not lose the war.” She won that war, but lost the next one. The triumph in my first skirmish with lung cancer was a temporary win. Maybe Arkansas Hospice will be in a position to share what they know of my future. We shall see.
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We abandoned Ballard, the television series that was sold as a riveting follow-on to Bosch. We remain entranced by The Bridge, which began with the discovery of a body found on the Øresund Bridge between Denmark and Sweden. The Bridge was first distributed in 2011; it’s just as intriguing 14 years later, I think, as it must have been when it was first broadcast.
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After the visit with Hospice, I’m off to my second (of this round) radiation therapy around noon today. I do SOOO love all this attention. Now, if only someone would perform a vivisection that I could watch later, on replay, that would make my day!
Under this tree, where light and shade
Speckle the grass like a Thrush’s breast,
Here, in this green and quiet place,
I give myself to peace and rest.~ W.H. Davis ~
