Sick and Tired and Strong
By ice rivers
- 2240 reads
We're sick and tired.
Lynn is sick and I'm tired.
Lynn has bronchitis. I have radiation after effects.
Lynn coughs. Lynn has a headache and a sore throat. She feels miserable yet she carries on.
Me, I'm tired.
When I think of the word "sick", I think of headaches, coughing, high temperature, fever, vomiting, nausea..all of the goodies we've come to know and dislike over the course of our lifetimes.
In that regard, I'm healthy. All I have is cancer. So far no pain, no vomiting, no diarrhea, no coughing. Nuttin'. I do have to pee a lot and of course I sleep way too much but as everyone can see, I'm awake now and that's a good thing.
The funny part is that I've never "felt" better than in the last five months since I've been diagnosed, biopsied, bone scanned, cat scanned and blasted with twenty eight belts of radiation. Sometimes, I forget I'm sick at all.
And then I remember that the battle is going on internally and I won't know the results of the contest for another month. It could go either way, I suppose. That's the weird part, I might be dying but I don't feel sick other than from the effects which tend to put me in the pit with my piss bucket.
Lynn is sick but she's full of life.
So just because you don't feel sick, it doesn't mean you aren't sick.
And if you're tired..do what Lynn does when she is sick. She keeps on truckin'.
The best part is I'm sitting at this keyboard, out of the pit, which means that at this second, the lights are shining on me.
I love writing and somebody out there likes me.
Thank you for paying attention.
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Comments
Really interesting, the sick
Really interesting, the sick but not-feeling-sick perspective. Good to know that your writing is helping you through this. Please keep posting the updates!
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Do not go gentle into that
Do not go gentle into that good night
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rage at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
The words are the opening couplet of a Dylan Thomas poem. They characterize the struggle that we all endure, as we come upon the immanency of our last breath. “Dragged kicking and screaming” would be the contemporary analog. Or, “hell no, I won’t go.” But then, we aren’t really given the choice are we?
That is part of Dylan’s rage against the dying of the light. We are powerless to alter the waning of the day and the coming dark. To some, particularly the young, it doesn’t seem fair or right. But then, no one said life was either easy or fair. “It is what it is,” some say with a fatalistic shrug.
Some few think their position can overcome the inevitable. Medieval English King Canute reputedly once stood on the shore and ordered the waves to stop. The waves of course washed over him as they would any one or thing standing in their way. It is our inability to change that which must become that fuels our rage against the inevitable. Not power, nor money nor social stature will affect our inevitable decline and departure. There is a certain egalitarian justice here. ‘You can’t take it with you,” would be the contemporary saying. Though the lord knows many have certainly tried.
But then, there are things that should draw our rage. The suffering and injustice of others has always raised the bile within me, particularly when it is the weak and the poor who take it on the chin, because that is their assigned lot in life. Who says? I wonder. The great beauty of the American Republic is that you can rage against injustice and inequity and change what others would think inevitable. Anyone can change the course of events here if they but have the fortitude to withstand the inevitable “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” as Shakespeare would say. “Crap flows down hill” is a contemporary interpretation.
I usually try to sort these things out by my own ability to bring about change. There was a time, in my earlier years when I sat in the halls of power, when I could wield the phone with the best of them and change many things that I felt unjust. Now, I couldn’t get you or myself arrested on a good day, even if I tried.
There is frustration here of course. But the perspicacity of age makes me judiciously select those battles where I have some chance of altering the outcome. The others, I think, will have to await the broader and more vigorous energies of younger folks who don’t mind engaging in herculean tasks, regardless of the outcome. Bless them for their youthful idealism and impetus.
So, while I too rage against the dying of the light, I think I can still get a few more licks in against what some think to be the inevitable. And the thought of another battle on the morrow is enough to gladden the heart and fire the blood of any Celt ever born.
-30-
(538 words)
Joseph Xavier Martin
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I admire you
I admire you you are very brave. 'And you my father on that sad height, curse, bless me now with your fierce tears I pray.'
Keep well and my best wishes && Nolan
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