deep thoughts

[arguchik]

it's funny. i don't believe in god, but i half believe that sometimes we are sent trials in order to learn much-needed lessons. like my use of passive voice, there? "we are sent" allows me to elide the real subject of the sentence. who sends? nobody. we, the object of the sending, simply receive what comes, eternally, from "elsewhere."

i'm still in the throes of my "delayed reaction" to the appendix tumor thing. now that i've reduced other stressors in my life that were distracting me, this one is taking center stage, and it's a doozy for sure. it's a blow square to my sense of mortality...which i thought i had already come to terms with, as an adult. i certainly lost my youthful sense of immortality a long time ago--i can't remember the last time i believed myself to be invincible. it must have been before junior high, because i definitely never felt like that after puberty. hell, i was shocked to wake up the day of my 21st birthday. as a teenager, i was quite certain i would die before i turned 21. then it was 29 (because my eldest sister died at 29). i am the youngest in my family by a lot, so i started dealing with death at a pretty young age. my maternal grandmother died when i was 5 or 6 i think (was it 1972 or 1973?). since then, my other two grandparents have died (my paternal grandfather died long before i was born); i've lost several aunts and uncles, three cousins, and my sister (not in that order). i used to hang out in the catholic cemetary as a kid, just walking around reading headstones, poking around here and there. i'm trying to say i have known death, welcomed it into my life in a way. when you have as many dead relatives as i do, you get used to it.

but it's different when it touches your own body. i didn't really believe that before, but it's true. (duh, right?)

i have begun to realize that it isn't so much about mortality, though. my own death. it's more about feeling like my body...which i have always liked...is not fully trustworthy. and where did i get off, anyway, trusting something as ridiculous as a body? well. i don't know, but i did trust it, and i'm not sure i ever will again.

is that aging?

i don't know. i had a great weekend, though...some aspects of it not so great but it was consistently exciting. i'll post about it soon.

Comments

[drjohn.livejournal.com]

Having an outside hospital's pathology reports contradicted not infrequently at conferences by the in-house experts, I think perhaps a review of the specimens/slides/report by a eminent pathologist who sees a lot of these may be at some point useful.

It may be really obviously the entity from the original diagnosis but the stakes are really high.

[arguchik.livejournal.com]

my thoughts exactly. i don't know why i didn't ask for this sooner. didn't want to deal with it, probably. dr. mann is at least very up front about his relative lack of experience with this family of diseases. should have sent up red flags a long time ago.

[xtingu]

I remember asking my grandfather what it felt like to be old. He was probably in his early 80s when I asked him. He had diabetes pretty badly, and the neuropathy in his legs made him very wobbly when he walked, to the point where he just tried to avoid walking when he could. So I asked him what it was like, and he said, "When I'm just sitting here, I feel like I'm 25. But when I try to get up to put milk in my coffee, I realize I'm not. My body has failed me, but mentally and emotionally I don't feel any different. I'm just frustrated."

Lately I have been having a sense of time flying by, and me getting older much faster now. I have this unlerlying sense of "I need to get x done right now, because I don't have much time left." I don't know why I have this sense, but it is very, very strong.

It blows my mind that someday we won't be here anymore. Of course, I'm pretty well convinced the world is gonna 'splode in 2012 anyway, so at least we'll all go together. :-P

Big hugs...

[arguchik.livejournal.com]

i am nodding, nodding, nodding "yes" to everything you're saying. time flying by...gotta do it all now...

i think you're right about 2012, or thereabouts. the 'splosion might be metaphorical...might take the form of melting polar ice caps and radically raised ocean levels, widespread food shortages, increasing pressures of global capitalism leading to outbreaks of violence and revolution...famine...disease...death...destruction... and the dawning of some new day with a radically shuffled new biological world order.

[(Anonymous)]

Ohh boy do I know. That trusting the body thing. Scary. I think a delayed reaction to the whole appendix thing is normal. Normal that it was delayed I mean. I has to come out at some point! For years, even as a kid I was petrified of dying to the point I'd lie in bed and cry. I have Mr. Botts to thank for that reading Edgar Allan Poe and the "Cask of Amontillado" burying some guy alive in the wall. Ugh.

I'm at a wierd place with Cora because she's now learning of death and I absolutely refuse to sugar coat death with fairy tales of heaven, because we are not going there. So figuring out how to explain death without scaring her is tricky. We put Boris to sleep in February and we only told her "he is gone." But soon, that isn't going to be sufficient. She's already asking where my mom and dad are and I look at her like a deer caught in the headlights!

[(Anonymous)]

Ohh boy do I know. That trusting the body thing. Scary. I think a delayed reaction to the whole appendix thing is normal. Normal that it was delayed I mean. I has to come out at some point! For years, even as a kid I was petrified of dying to the point I'd lie in bed and cry. I have Mr. Botts to thank for that reading Edgar Allan Poe and the "Cask of Amontillado" burying some guy alive in the wall. Ugh.

I'm at a wierd place with Cora because she's now learning of death and I absolutely refuse to sugar coat death with fairy tales of heaven, because we are not going there. So figuring out how to explain death without scaring her is tricky. We put Boris to sleep in February and we only told her "he is gone." But soon, that isn't going to be sufficient. She's already asking where my mom and dad are and I look at her like a deer caught in the headlights!

Kelli