The reason I haven’t posted lately is that I have a burning idea inside my head that has flickered into a flame. I am 60. The average early age of pancreatic cancer. I am the family genealogist so I know the ages and causes of death cf almost all my ancestors back to my great, great, great grandfather, as well as most of the other members of my family. Let’s just say that after about 70 the mortality rate approaches 100%. That means that I can expect ten years, maybe a little more left. If I have a relapse of cancer that may be shortened.
Here I am at 60, I am considered a miracle by my doctors for the stand I made against pancreatic cancer. Having been made cancer free I have a hell of a situation. I have to make something of my life, what is left of it. On the bright side, I can do anything I want and all the time in which to do it. On the dark side, I can do anything I want, I just have a limited time in which to do it. I am having an awful lot of trouble rationalizing these two extreme outlooks, knowing they are one and the same and yet paradoxically opposing.
I have tried as well to shift my medical care to MD Anderson in Houston. The catch is that if I am cancer free, then they assume there is no follow on care to be done, hence they cannot monitor me for a recurrence of cancer until I manifest symptoms. And with pancreatic cancer, then it is usually too late. I have some alternatives but right now that is the ‘stuck on high center’ situation I am in.
Those are the elements of my conundrum. The dry technical points off of which my dilemmas protrude and vex me. I can go whole hog and act like the paradoxes do not exist, or I can let them defeat me at the starting gate. Today I feel listless and undirected. I have let all of these conditions overwhelm me. I cannot see in one direction far enough to see a solution before I see more obstructions that offer similar vexations and obfuscations. It is a hot an humid day here in Texas. The pop up thunderstorms are forming all around here. I have some cheap chardonnay and I am going outside to watch and ponder my situation. These logjams has to clear simply because not all of them can stay as a fixed point vexation forever. Just this moment I am caught in a vortex of unresolved potential outcomes, none of which can or will be resolved to any degree whatsoever right now.
I will have to resolve that even if I am 60, at least I am not dead so I have to keep going. Easy enough to say, nearly impossible to accept at this moment. The medical issue will resolve to some fuzzy sort of conclusion, just not today. I start the contract Friday, so until then I have no opportunity to prove that situation out. In the mean time my mind is in a deadlock, the rational against the emotional against the philosophical against the pragmatist in me. I am at the intersection of several avenues of my life and can do nothing about any of it today.
I found a contract job to install computers at a school. It runs an incredible three days. This is at the very bottom of the list of possibilities for me. But it will bring in some money and give me some outside contact. I don’t know which is more valuable. The job is about 70 miles from here and pays $7.42/hr with and incredible $.44/mile each way. The travel pay is more than the 8 hour wage. If that works out there may be more work, hopefully something little more intellectually challenging. The company is comprised of mostly veterans, Gulf and Iraq war guys. I am the oldest by far, Viet Nam era. I rather resent and value this at the same time. I don’t know if I am up for it physically or mentally, but I will give it my best. This may be the infancy of a new career, maybe not. At the very least it will be a significant difference from the last several years. At the very worst I will not be able to do the job because of physical limitations. Not likely given that such has never happened to me before.
The first day of a contract job installing PCs in a school district nearby I saw this painted on the schoolhouse wall:
“Dream like you ‘ll live forever, Live like you’ll die tomorrow”
All of a sudden my conundrum has been solved. Seems like I just tied myself into the Gordian Knot and this cut it all loose. And my doctor has set me up with another doctor that he trusts and together the three of us will get my treatment planned out, and that will include MD Anderson. Seems like clear sailing for a while. Bill Gillmore
