Discourse

I had a recent and brief exchange with my uncle after a recent post about life, its potential pointlessness, and the struggle to find meaning.

(Chris)
Interesting ruminations! I think that Tolstoy’s outlook is pretty pessimistic. I believe that life has a purpose, but I don’t necessarily
believe that your illness has anything to do with it. Your purpose may be to help someone later in life, maybe to have kids, work with people experiencing poverty, invent, write, or draw something important. Maybe this three-year period is just a detour that has nothing to do with that. I don’t know!!!
much love,

(Jeremiah)
His outlook certainly was pessimistic… but I feel that was the impetus for his spiritual pursuits/awakening. He had to fall into that place of despair to arrive. I guess, the way I look at it, I was already en route to these things; in my last semester of grad school, I was going through interviews with the Peace Corps to work (with people with low incomes, perhaps) in Albania. I was writing … I was drawing. I think that a detour that goes on for three years is a bit excessive. It isn’t the physical journey but that of the mind, psyche, etc. As I have written, the toll that all this has taken is very significant. Yes, my oncologist can say, “You look great!”
But he doesn’t see the damage on the inside. Of course, his objective is to treat the patient, so externally, I look “great.” I don’t know where I am going with this. I do that this illness, and the longevity of it, MUST have something to do with it / with life. I have to think like this; otherwise, what’s the point? If all my struggling physically and psychologically was all for naught … I can’t go that route in thinking… I spiral out of control…

Chris
Naturally, everything we go through leads us to be who we are at any moment. So you are, and will be, a very different person than you would have been had you not gotten cancer. But that doesn’t mean (in my mind) that it is directly related to your purpose in life.

The “new normal”

After drinking one liter of contrast dye and being poked numerous times to place an IV, my chest/abdomen/thorax show stability! No new developments – things are as they were and have been – stable!

Now, the task is sorting out these seizures. My anticonvulsant med has been increased, so we’re hoping this holds. However, if it doesn’t, the next step would be inpatient epilepsy monitoring. Several months ago, this was the initial idea; however, my neurologist didn’t want to jump into that. As he said, “Let’s leave well enough alone.” At the time, it had been a few months since my last seizure, and the hope was that the medication was holding. After my recent seizure, however, it was decided that, should another episode occur, I would enter the EMU (epilepsy monitoring unit) at Maine Medical Neuroscience Institute to get a very clear idea of the seizure activity.

Part of me wants to enter the unit right now to really understand the root cause of these debilitating seizures. The flip side is that I am exhausted, and the thought of being impatient for any reason makes me angry and sick to my stomach.

I want to return to normal, and this bullshit idea of this being the “new normal” greatly annoys me! This mentality is far too easy to put forth from people who haven’t spent 3 years trying to stabilize themselves, right themselves, adapt, and readjust every moment of every day.

The positive news is that my lungs/thorax/etc. Are stable overjoys me… but I celebrate halfheartedly, always wondering what might be lurking, waiting for me to let my guard down. History has shown that with every up, with every moment of elation, is followed by a horrific down, a paralyzing fall. What is seen as pessimism, or something similar, is me trying to minimize the letdown, the fall from too great a height. Being in this constant state of emotional and psychological neutrality is a shame.

Perhaps that is my “new normal”.

All of the journeys. All of them.

A feeling of disconnection

I have come back to this image many times. I am uncertain of how so much time has passed since this photo was taken. I know and understand the length of time… it seems otherworldly. I look at myself, and though this is recognition, there is this strange feeling of disconnection between the two beings; the person of now and the person of then.