Nietzsche Knew The Price Tag

           

                             

                                             

                     

2:45 a.m.


One finger left-handed typing, so bear that in mind.

Well...one third of the way through the gauntlet.

Yesterday was the "Needle Localization" step, one of two procedures I must have prior to the third step, the"big surgery" April 5th.

 It was very much like the biopsy, which I don't think I'll ever recall without an involuntary cringe. Nobody prepares you for how bad that shit is gonna HURT.

Pain is visiting me and I'm exhausted so I won't say all of what I feel right now; it's pretty grim and there's no point in needlessly upsetting people.

I will say this, though:  Catastrophe is the uninvited wedding guest who brings exactly the gift you needed most.

My life "before"...with all its warts & lumps was such a sweet life. Why couldn't I recognize that every blessed day? WHY did I waste even one minute feeling anything but gratitude?

I always awoke with gratitude on my lips, mind you; my morning prayer before arising was always "Thank You God, for this place, this life".

                          Did God not hear me? Was I not speaking clearly enough?

                          Did He think I wasn't sincere or sufficiently humble?

                                               

I watched "Grey's Anatomy" last night. In that episode a Rabbi was dying of a very rare but lethal skin reaction to medication. In speaking to a bitter female Doctor who'd lost a newborn to a devastating birth defect, he said "Who are we to think we must know the answer to why bad things happen in life?!"
                                           

It sounds so simple, doesn't it? Who ARE we to think we must know why? And yet, the heart craves the answer all the same when merciless misfortune casts its pall on our hearth.

I know right now, this hour, this minute-- there are many who suffer far greater pain, far greater misery and anguish than I.  And yet...I grieve for the tidy little life, the small and simple daily pleasures I afforded myself here; the satisfaction of hard work done solo, the pride I took in completing the humblest and mundane of tasks.

                                 I loathe my pain and what it's already robbed from me.

                                                   

I do not think those happy daily rituals are gone from me forever, but I do not know when I can resume them.

                                          I feel punished. Okay, THERE. I said it.

      I can't open a jar of peanut butter or brush my hair with my right arm. I cannot paint. Sounds trivial, I'm so sure it does, and yet ---they are such bridges of independence, those small daily acts.

I suppose all cancer patients feel these feelings.  I am weary of people cheering me to "stay positive!".   I don't feel positive. When people say that to me, I feel the pressure of letting them down if I'm not "positive", so I lie and say everything's "fine".  I say I'm fine when I am anything but. Frankly, it's way too much to explain. And some of that, I'm sure, is a down-home mentality, an extrapolation of Donna Reed Etiquette I was inculcated with that whispers "Ladies" don't whine.

 I feel a certain intensity of physical pain I've never before experienced and I've been living detente with disability for 17 years. I want to turn the volume down on that pain.  Way down.

        And as I say that, I well know much more is coming to a breast near me very soon.

Is it brave to suffer silently? ---To wordlessly pass the long hours of night counting moments I grieve the loss of when I should be thankful for each precious breath I draw?

There are foreign objects medically placed in my body, in my breast. I can feel them, sharp and arrogant, hateful intruders. There is no waking (or sleeping) moment I do not feel them. Sometimes the pain seems to be trying to push these things out of me. Once when I had kidney stones years ago and had a stent implanted, my body, against all reason, pushed it out.  This feels like that.

The last year of my life chiseled into my heart a deep chasm of personal despair r/t a family matter; a consumptive sadness so heavy and opaque that at times it seemed the sun ceased shining at all in my world. Holidays were grey, meaningless, punitive. I holed up here, marinating in my reclusiveness and sorrow. I stress-ate everything not nailed down. I unplugged the phone on those days when the heartache was too heavy to bear words. I manufactured faux joy and tinny laughter on the phone when I was obliged to talk to someone so I wouldn't make other people sad or concerned. I kept ties with those closest to me because I didn't want to be alone in my life even if I desperately wanted to be  left alone in my house. When I did tell the truth to only those closest to me, I fretted endlessly that I'd ward them off with my (that word again!) whining.

  Perhaps cancer is the price tag on all that. I recall several lectures in Nursing College about patients who grieve deeply, who suffer enormous loss, often develop heart disease and/or cancers more frequently than those who aren't grieving.

                                            Am I one of them?  Am I a statistic?

                            I don't know the answers. Probably...probably I never did.

             Ever thinking I had any answers is a human conceit,
                                                         something we are all often guilty of.

                                                                  3:58 a.m.

                            I need to encourage my body and mind rest for a few hours.

                              Meanwhile, I'm thinking Nietzsche knew something I don't.