In order to make sense of the world I live in, I accept a linear, finite, time. I acknowledge a start and end point, a series of post-its that propose the near term, a series of cards to hold dates in a future that is anchored to a series of numbers under a collection of days in a longer series by which I age. I know now, I know then, I suspect forever.
I think of this against my meeting yesterday with the surgeon, Dr. Brigance. The extremely bright examining room, the poking of my hole, the examination of the new tumor, the continuing metastatation of my personal cancer. That now, virtually none of it went as I hoped, barring the fact that we were both pleased that this time around, I weighed 152 pounds.
We spoke of the potential healing effects of hyperbaric treatment, which he has reservations about. We spoke of this redeveloping chest wall tumor which confuses me but is a sign of the power of cancer to him. We spoke of Surgery 2.
That oft-thought-of future event, the giant mental card in my head with two weeks blocked off here or there, my birthday? A Thanksgiving in the hospital? Why not--it's not like I'll be enjoying turkey dinner anyway. I'd give thanks to be fixed. I'd give thanks to wake and be Mark A. Price, again. To haul him into my now, reanimated, whatever zombie state I'd have to put up with just to see him again.
Yet, for all the anticipation, there will be no Surgery 2. Our forthright discussion went into a distressingly short list of potential postives from the surgery and a distressing long list of the risks I'd engage by having it. Surgery 2 was the plan to take the right pectoral muscle and pull it up under the skin to create a new covering for the hole in my neck; it was to reform what was so effectively slaughtered under the great hot eye of the Radiation God. It was the future and the forever to me, it was the promise that a normal was returning. It was a thought I planted as much as I planted the yard this Spring, that I drifted from, allowing it to grow as it would.
And it did grow, back there, in the mind's corner it occupied, a clematis, a bean stalk, a milkweed against the black railing of what is. It took on shapes and characteristics no patched skin ever could fill: happiness, hope, deniability, possibility.
In the incredibly annoying overhead lighting of that University Hospital examining room, though, what became clear is that somewhere along the path of this walk, I've changed in ways I've hardly acknowledged well. That I am no longer willing to risk, that the casino which never tempted me is now repugnant, with its smoke, its manipulation, its booze and old hope. I listened to that list of risks and half way through knew that I could not, would not, will not, engage it. There will be no more of the man who took on this cancer with the idea that he would not be an exception to the rule. He was. There will be no more of the man who walked into radiation believing he would not be an exception to the ability of the protocol to staunch what ailed him. He was. There will be no more of the man who trusted the chemicals to treat him as they done for some many others. He's not.
I've known in other ways, in other gardens, in my better mind, that there will be no remission, there will be no old normals, that I won't sing again, that I won't speak again, that I won't eat again, but I've agitated against that knowledge in darkness, and secret, and squattted in the corner of that reality with petulance. I could have moved on already, and inculcated that my face will remain distorted and my neck will have a hole, and the snots will annoy me. I could have just fucking done that like any reasonable adult, but my boy had to have his moment.
What finally moved me? The truth, the polar vortex of it. The fact that a covered neck hole would funnel all the crap that drains out of me to the throat that doesn't work, that I would run the risk of aspiration pneumonia on an on-going basis, that my voicebox would then absolutely have to go, that it would open the possibility of further complicated surgeries that would involve more risks I've yet to be horrified by, that I would choke, forever, on what I could not get rid of, and could not process.
I hate the hole in my neck, and I'm alarmed that I can live with one, but I can. The inside of the hole has healed in a way the exterior skin, traumatized into votive submission, could not. It's a trap door, a way for me to control my panic when I believe I'm choking--I change the dressing, pull out the gunk that is frightening me, and I feel better.
So, what is now is forever. The changes that come to me near term will be those I make within, if any. The future arrived and it looked like yesterday, so I ignored it until I realized what it was.
And, I'm ok with this. I hate the conditions, but I play the game. Because the world still amazes me, I want to stay with it awhile longer. Because I'm curious how long I can balance, I walk a tightrope even though I've never trained for it. As though I had game, I play to see how far I go. Will it be 70? Is it possible I make it there as I've promised myself?
Last night I thought of how the world has changed in my lifetime, how much is different, how much discovery and innovation has laid havoc and joy upon me. I see that now and forever being no different are at least part of a process by which movement is neither forward, backward, up or down, but a march to the power of mind willing to take responsibility for the world it marches in.
I do not know, by the numbers of five years, what might be possible for me. If by then the truly splendid fake bone appears that makes a jaw for me, that the neuro-net allows my thoughts to be spoken as if by my old voice, if the nutrition I pour into my tube comes in flavors I crave like pot roast or burger and fries, peanut butter and honey.
The doctor thinks I'm rational. It was a great compliment from a fellow who has not complimented me overly much, but has delivered a series of shit bulletins to my cornucopia of fantasy. How little he knows of what is going on inside here! How I am hopeful, how I skip to the continual music of a universe that promises me joy, how I refuse to allow cancer to eat Mark A. Price, how I protect him even if I cannot save his various organs.
He just doesn't know how I love this, and why, and how could I tell him? That what I want is to be greater than where I am and how I am and why. For no one but myself.
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