“If we were honest with ourselves, we would admit our lives are fictions, narrative yarns we spin from experiences as we witness them, not necessarily as they are. We write the stories of our lives on the fly, stitching together thin fibers of personal interpretation into whole cloth. We dress ourselves in clothing of our own making; some wear gossamer gowns, others wear costumes made of canvas.”
Changed by a few minor editorial decisions over the years, the preceding words reflected my thinking of nearly nine years ago. Looking back at those syllables and sentences, I realize my words may not have quite conveyed the essence of their intended meaning. Had my mood been slightly different when I wrote them, originally, I might have phrased the message in another way:
“We do not know ourselves, so we peek through a veil of ignorance, looking for clues that might help define us. We then mold our personalities around impressions of how others see us—or how we want to be seen—creating characters who bear little resemblance to the person behind the mask as we look into a mirror.”
A lot has changed over the last nine years, though. The fragility of life has been emphatically asserted, more than once. That fragility, though, has been counterbalanced by the steadfast, unyielding, and irrevocable permanence of death. Life is not assured, but death is guaranteed to follow life. Pain tends to interrupt the clarity of philosophies, except when emotions are anesthetized, which is a rarity.
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My visit with the radiologist yesterday confirmed for me that my cancer has metastasized to two vertebral structures, in addition to several lymph nodes. The good news…that some existing spots improved with the first new chemo…was counterbalanced by the bad news of the expanding reach of the cancer. I knew from the start that a recurrence of lung cancer usually means the disease is incurably terminal, but I’ve held out hope that I might be among those “one in a million” to prove that certainty is unreliable. That hope must be an emotional reaction to such news. Today, I return to the oncologist for a visit to follow-up on last week’s chemo session. I will inquire about alternative pain meds; the ones I’ve started taking increasingly over the last few weeks are not as effective as I’d like and they can cause some side-effects that can be worse in some ways than the pain they are meant to combat. For the last few weeks, the usual fatigue has been increasingly accompanied by bouts of pain. In recent days, the pain in my gut/chest has become more frequent, to the point of being almost constant. It is not excruciating, but seems to be making incremental progress in that direction, as if it is approaching pain as a desirable objective. Sleeping through it would be nice, but it awakens me sometimes, which is more than a little annoying. Last night, I woke in the wee hours, drenched in sweat. When I returned to bed after the obligatory pee, the cold, wet sheets made me feel like I was crawling into an icy tent, its Gore-Tex floor sitting atop a snow drift. I’ve never actually crawled into an icy Gore-Tex tent floor sitting atop a snow drift, but I think I know how it would feel, now.
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It’s hard to maintain a good mood when in pain. And when I’m in a bad mood, I do not want to be around myself. Pain makes it worse. Even moderate pain. More severe pain degrades my mood even more, making living with myself yet more difficult. If I were someone else, I would not tolerate my presence in a particularly bad mood…but when it’s me, I have little choice. It’s best to isolate myself until my mood passes…or I do. That’s intended to be a little dark humor, by the way.
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Mi novia says caring for me is not a burden; that she knows I would do the same for her. And I would. But I also know it’s stressful and nerve-wracking and tiring. My appreciation of what she is dealing with is immense, but not enough to make it any more appealing for her. And the likely progression of the disease is apt to make it even more difficult. That is one of the reasons I’ve always said I would like to build a stash of medications. Ach, never mind. It’s too late now to gather enough to accomplish the desired objective. Unless, of course, anyone reading this diatribe would anonymously provide me with 15 grams of sodium pentobarbital in injectable liquid solution and access to a physician willing to do the deed. More dark humor.
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Enough typing for this morning. I have to get ready to go out and about.
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