Tuesday, June 23, 2020

Being told in TV and Movies that You are Going Blind and Dying of Cancer

Versus in real life.

While I have been laid up I have fast forwarded through Netflix and Prime movies about people with cancer and watched even more trailers on that topic. Having been given a sentence of blindness and death from an aggressive wide-spread cancer, and having lived with that news for 3 weeks before it was corrected, I have a lot of interest in how others have behaved. Luckily, I have not been around many family members who died of cancer, and the one I knew best went out raging against the world. At the time we did not evaluate our behavior, but after the reprieve came we were astounded at how well we had behaved to each other and how rationally we had dealt with the prospect of early death. We were blindsided (as it were) at times, as when I got a great email and said, "I have to save this." Save it for when? So I laughed at myself.
We just kept cool. We immediately made holograph wills, which are legal here (our local lawyer who had our wills had simply disappeared), then started the longer process of making new wills with the help of another lawyer. We were rational about secondary beneficiaries and everything else. I laid out a hundred or so items for the first volume of ORNERY PEOPLE.
We were not prepared for just how devastating Valley Fever is and how powerful the anti-fungal drug is, and we were not prepared for a new blood clot and a full-leg compression stocking. Certainly we were not prepared for one of us going out alone to do battle for groceries and gas and drugs. The realization is that at 84 with severe medical problems I am a prime candidate for the coronavirus. There is no point getting a reprieve from cancer and going out among arrogant tourists and reckless locals when someone else, someone younger and healthier, will put on a hazmat suit and go for food. I had been a strong old guy in 2019, walking and even running some days, always on the beach, and doing little floor exercises for the lower body. All that stamina is gone, and the right eye is probably never going to be better than it is now, damaged, if it stays that way. The two other documented examples of Valley Fever victims whose disease presented in the eye both ultimately went blind. Today, the primary care physician. But I am much more cheerful than I have any grounds for being. If the eye stays as good as it is now . . . .

No comments:

Post a Comment