a free man

This is it.

I knew that something was wrong about six weeks ago when I buttoned my jeans one morning, pulled my belt into its standard well-worn hole and headed down to make a coffee. My pants slid down around my hips about halfway down the stairs.

Men of a certain age – my age – who live on a steady diet of red meat and ice cream and consider exercise akin to a psychological disorder do not lose weight.

But I dealt with this unusual circumstance in the way I deal with most disturbing things – the same way that the allegorical ostrich deals with a lion.

I made the mistake of mentioning this unexplained weight loss to Dr. O’C, however, and found myself at my local GP’s office a couple of weeks later. He ordered tests. A week later I was back listening to him tell me that a couple of them were abnormal. Nothing to worry about, but lets just do another one or three. More tests and another week later I’m back in his office, this time with Boy Z in tow – a toddler talisman against bad news.

An ineffective one.

More abnormal test results, firmer and more demanding in their abnormality*. The doctor, a good one, sees a flash of pure panic on my face and tries to reassure me. It’s most likely nothing to fret too much about. Likely benign growths. Only a slim chance of cancer. Five percent maybe, ten at the outside.

Cancer? Who now?

I’ve gone from basically no chance of cancer to a ’slim chance’ in the blink of an eye. Admittedly, I never fared well in my math courses but by my calculations. But as I remember it, anything times zero equals infinity. Therefore, by my reckoning I am now infinitely more likely to have cancer than I was three weeks ago.

This is the first time I’ve written that word. The ‘c’ word. And I don’t like the look of it one bit. Am I freaking out? No. I get through my days. I do my work. I spend time with friends and family. I know, despite my black math, that chances are everything is OK. Chances are that this is a blip. For fuck’s sake, I’m 37 years old. I’ve got a little boy and another on the way. The past three or four years have been the best of my life. Everything has to be alright.

But what if it isn’t?

In rare moments of quiet solitude, my imagination runs wild. I feel phantom pains. Nightmare scenarios, unwelcome, pop into my head and play themselves out like a film. In the night, when I put my book down and turn off the bedside lamp my mind, rather than slipping quietly into sleep, goes to those dark corners of my mind where things are not alright. That film is not one that I want to see.

I have to go back in a couple of weeks for the test. The one that dictates my future in a clinically decisive manner. I’ve decided in writing this that the thing to do in the mean time is to live each day as if I’m going to receive the worst case scenario when I go for that test. Leave the petty bullshit aside – the stuff that doesn’t matter and just revel in my beautiful life.

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I haven’t decided as of writing this whether to open this post to  comments. But if I do – and I love y’all, my readers – but don’t you dare tell me it is going to be OK unless you have intimate knowledge of my colon. Don’t give me sickly sweet platitudes. Don’t do that.

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*I know I’m being vague. This is intentional.

**If you’re reading this, I’m not sure why. Dr. O’C asked what was the point of posting it. I don’t have an answer for that. The writing is therapeutic, but I wrote it. Therapy done. Why post it for any random surfer to see? I guess it is an ‘if a tree falls in the forest…’ thing.

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I’m still in my Eels phase this week. There’s something about them that seems right for the current clime. Could be worse, I guess – Elliott Smith maybe. I checked out their new full-length, “Hombre Lobo”  () and it is really very strong, but it is still “Electro-Shock Blues Show” that is doing it for me. Buy it from .

 

 Eels "Cancer for the Cure": Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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