Sunday, October 31, 2010

Next verse the same as the first!

I am not special. Probably the most significant thing I have ever done was to beat out 6,000,000 other little spermies in that great first race! I might have cheated, fought and clawed my way to the top. The swim of a lifetime and I don't remember it!
I don't remember how I got cancer, it doesn't come like that, suddenly like a broken arm. One day I was shaving and found "the lump"! a small, pea sized bump in my neck. I did take note of it but chose to ignore it, not out of any fear, but just because I had other things to do and I have never run to my doctor over every little cut and bump. A couple months later it was still there, a little bigger and now there were three of them! I thought of "Aliens" and knew I had something in me! It was a couple months after that when I went to my doctor! I had cancer in 132 places and in my spleen and spine! Well crap!
I always try to put things in perspective. The dinosaurs lived on this Earth for millions of years and the Human Species for about 10,000, at least as we know us to be. My best friend died at 27 years old in a construction accident. We killed Christ when He was about 30 years old.
Some infants only live for one breath! I was sixty-three and already beaten the odds many times over! It is not the way I would have chosen but my thought at the time was "this will be interesting!" And it is interesting if you want to see the edge of Hell. I was like Superman embedded in Kryptonite, every day withering away, getting sicker, dieing really.
Cancer survivors often go through a "why me" experience. Sometimes, and certainly in my case, we don't wonder why we got it, we wonder why we survived it! This chemo process is done in a sort of elegant warehouse where you are never alone but sitting side by side with other cancer patients and a lot of them don't show up the next week, always new ones taking their place. It is a difficult process to say the least and I began it while very strong.
It is gone now! I would like to say, "just like that"! I am now healing not from the cancer but from this voodoo chemical cure. That too is a long process, but truely every day is better and it is a great road compared to the one I have been on. In a way I feel "born again", given another chance, raced to the top and beat those six million spermies again! I have found no revolation, nothing spectacular that I need to do and am quite happy to continue on as I was, playing in my studio, a little art, a little writing, and working in my garden always after that "perfect tomato".

2 comments:

  1. Good to read that things continue to go well my friend!!..:-)
    Best Wishes,
    Terry..

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