I have known something for most of my life. It is not secret information, but living by it provides a sense of freedom especially when your understanding of it is clear and unencumbered.
What I know is that our instinct is to survive. Now, you may be thinking that this is obvious to the point of being mundane and that they have started my treatments a little early and that I am being effected by the toxic impact upon my brain, one of the multiple side effects of my upcoming treatment. But, really, it is a simply thing to know but we, in the larger sense of we, fall prey to the things we want and forget that what we are doing is surviving now under the comfort of this civilization we have built up over the past 4-6000 years, but mostly over the past 200 years.
All living things seek to survive and once you respect that knowledge and accept it, confronting those things that are surviving means accepting their right to try to survive. Now, obviously as the self-absorbed species we are, we think first about our survival, which is normal because it is the perpetuation of our lives first of all, and secondly the survival and perpetuation of our species that drives us in the basic DNA that makes us do a lot of things we can not many times understand. Think adolescent here. Many times our survival depends upon the elimination of others that are trying to take what we have and will just as soon see us individually extinct so that they can supplant us. Bigger issues here, so watch the nightly news to stay up to date with who is trying to supplant whom.
So, what does that have to do with me? Well, I have this colony of cells that have been trying to use me as their host for onwards of 14-15 years in their attempt to survive. About seven years ago I thought we had evicted the little bastards after their surprise announcement that they had been living as squatters in my left kidney for 6-8 years. With some of the best surgeon's anywhere, the eviction notice was posted and out went the progeny of the earlier settlers, their progeny and the great, great, great progenitor of the entire mass from my gut in what amounted to (not a record) but one large mass of cells that were trying their best to survive at my expense.
That's another thing about survival, many times it is at something or someone's expense and if we stopped our own ruthless attempt to survive, well, then we become extinct. Getting back to my surgery of 7 years ago, the surgeon, who came into my room the morning after, described what he took out of my gut as something in the neighborhood of a soccer ball in size. He said this with a satisfied grin on his face knowing for the moment he had joined in battle with this intruder and defeated it.
Now I have had the unpleasant and disheartening news that we did not, in fact, get all of those little fucking pirates but that they have been sailing beneath the best detecting equipment medical science possesses to return this past year and establish a new colony in a lymph node just below the y-branch of my air ducts leading from my wind pipe to each of my lungs. At the moment no other colonies have been found, but if they are there, they are out there pitching their little camps of mutants and infringing upon my otherwise good health.
Now it is up to what treatments are available to me, aisles two, to see if we can slow these guys down some or just burn them out once and for all, think Sherman's march to the sea here. Life comes with an expiration date for us all, but I'll be damned if this cancer will put me in the express checkout lane when I have more things in my cart than allows time for in this life. So, the battle is joined again and this time I feel like I have the edge because I know they are there and go willingly to the fight.
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| FIVE PLUS Breakfast, San Pedro de Atacama, May - 2011 |
What I know is that our instinct is to survive. Now, you may be thinking that this is obvious to the point of being mundane and that they have started my treatments a little early and that I am being effected by the toxic impact upon my brain, one of the multiple side effects of my upcoming treatment. But, really, it is a simply thing to know but we, in the larger sense of we, fall prey to the things we want and forget that what we are doing is surviving now under the comfort of this civilization we have built up over the past 4-6000 years, but mostly over the past 200 years.
All living things seek to survive and once you respect that knowledge and accept it, confronting those things that are surviving means accepting their right to try to survive. Now, obviously as the self-absorbed species we are, we think first about our survival, which is normal because it is the perpetuation of our lives first of all, and secondly the survival and perpetuation of our species that drives us in the basic DNA that makes us do a lot of things we can not many times understand. Think adolescent here. Many times our survival depends upon the elimination of others that are trying to take what we have and will just as soon see us individually extinct so that they can supplant us. Bigger issues here, so watch the nightly news to stay up to date with who is trying to supplant whom.
So, what does that have to do with me? Well, I have this colony of cells that have been trying to use me as their host for onwards of 14-15 years in their attempt to survive. About seven years ago I thought we had evicted the little bastards after their surprise announcement that they had been living as squatters in my left kidney for 6-8 years. With some of the best surgeon's anywhere, the eviction notice was posted and out went the progeny of the earlier settlers, their progeny and the great, great, great progenitor of the entire mass from my gut in what amounted to (not a record) but one large mass of cells that were trying their best to survive at my expense.
That's another thing about survival, many times it is at something or someone's expense and if we stopped our own ruthless attempt to survive, well, then we become extinct. Getting back to my surgery of 7 years ago, the surgeon, who came into my room the morning after, described what he took out of my gut as something in the neighborhood of a soccer ball in size. He said this with a satisfied grin on his face knowing for the moment he had joined in battle with this intruder and defeated it.
Now I have had the unpleasant and disheartening news that we did not, in fact, get all of those little fucking pirates but that they have been sailing beneath the best detecting equipment medical science possesses to return this past year and establish a new colony in a lymph node just below the y-branch of my air ducts leading from my wind pipe to each of my lungs. At the moment no other colonies have been found, but if they are there, they are out there pitching their little camps of mutants and infringing upon my otherwise good health.
Now it is up to what treatments are available to me, aisles two, to see if we can slow these guys down some or just burn them out once and for all, think Sherman's march to the sea here. Life comes with an expiration date for us all, but I'll be damned if this cancer will put me in the express checkout lane when I have more things in my cart than allows time for in this life. So, the battle is joined again and this time I feel like I have the edge because I know they are there and go willingly to the fight.
