Monthly Archives: February 2010

Exceptionally enervating few days. Thursday folded itself into Friday, which folded itself into Saturday and Sunday. Sort of a little origami weekend.

A friend’s father wrote a thought-provoking e-mail the other day. It included the following challenge:

This technology provides an opportunity  for public introspection (maybe that’s something you don’t want to do… maybe, though, it is) but I’m guessing your friends and family and not to mention you would benefit  from your less glib and more introspective thoughts.

Before getting into the significance of the thought, don’t read too brusque a tone into that passage. It’s taken slightly out of context—from a warmly written message.

In any case, the e-mail got me thinking about this blog and about the purpose—or value—of writing on a serious topic like sickness (or loss, love, etc.) And I’m not entirely sure I have a good answer, for myself or for my friend’s father.

At the hospital the other day, between my episodes of retching into my yellow emesis bucket, my brother Josh kept repeating the same bon mot: “When life gives you cancer, make cancer juice.” I guess it should technically be “make cancer-ade,” but that’s sort of beside the point.

It goes without saying that it’s easier to joke about a painful situation than to weep about it. It’s less emotionally draining and it probably requires less thought. Which brings us to the question of the glibness of my blog (the strength of its glibido, if you will). According to my trusty digital version of Merriam-Webster, the third definition of glib is ”lacking depth and substance.” Is that too harsh? Maybe a little. But as Mel Brooks says, “Humor is just another defense against the universe.” To jest about something that cuts to the bone is, in a sense, to try and slough it off with minimized discomfort. I haven’t bared every ounce of my being here in my writing, nor have I literarily (or philosophically) wrestled with the largest elephants in the room (though I have boxed with some decent-sized hippos).

As a writer, that might mean I’m dissembling. But as me, I think it’s a good place to start. Or rather, it’s a place to start. If I had a little scribe in my head, keenly recording every impulse or sensation I’m experiencing, he’d probably eschew humor and just spew viscera and bile onto these august (Web) pages. But seeing as I’m the filter through whom I’m filtering these words, I believe I’m satisfied for now with just writing something down.

The best analogy I can muster right now is surgical. It’s a little trite, but it’ll do the trick. One day, you’re walking in a riverbed and you slip, dislocating your shoulder. It hurts like hell, so the medics give you morphine. That doesn’t get your shoulder back in its socket, but it soothes your mind and body enough so they can cart you off to the hospital. Then, once you’re three sheets to the wind, they pop the shoulder back in. A few months later, you have an MRI and it turns out you’ve got a torn labrum. So you schedule your arthroscopy, truck yourself into ambulatory surgery, and—presto-chango—the sick are healed. Do a little physical therapy and the only reminders you have of the whole thing are a good story and a faint clicking noise when you stretch.

You should be able to put those Legos together according to the picture on the box. But if you’re too much like me and always ended up wondering how come this Aquanauts set didn’t magically generate an underwater kingdom upon completion, I’ll do a little sketching. When you (and by you, I really mean me) take a traumatic hit, the best first thing to do is get the immediate discomfort down from tooth-gnashing to nose-scrunching. In the case of my shoulder, you would use morphine—in the case of this analogy, you (and again, I really mean me here) would use this blog. You can do the rest yourself (if it’s any consolation, the Aquanauts in that set did come with these sleek silver knives for the Lego dudes and a cool little working crane for lifting the buried treasure).

Perhaps later I will offer myself (and my readers) a different take on how I’m feeling—less jokey, more gritty. That’s like the shoulder-relocation, MRI, surgery, etc. part. For now, I’ll lie dopily on my back, under the inebriated warmth of too much morphine.

Let Al Gore explain my Michael Stipe-esque pate.

I’ve learned many lessons these past few weeks and month. For example, I’m starting to suspect that the drugs the doctors are giving me have some unpleasant side-effects. It just seems unlikely that global warming would make my hair fall out.

Update: It now occurs to me that my previous post was titled “The Day After Tomorrow.” Must have been having a premonition. Anyway, check back later for more conspiracy theories.

That is my last day of treatment for the week. So today is a major hump day here at the old ward. I wonder if there are hump days in the camel world. If so, Dromedaries would use the traditional Wednesday hump day. But the Bactrian camel would have to observe hump days on both Tuesdays and Thursdays. Just something interesting to think on.

Despite the dreary weather today the ward is operating normally. So I’m back to my usual chair. It’s not too bad, though the man behind me has been waxing poetically about the state of his bodily fluids. More to follow after my lunch arrives.