Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Denying The Inevitable

         “The hair on my head is leaving me, turning white with fear,

abandoning me bald and bereft, like rats on a sinking ship.”

 

Do I sound depressed, distraught, uncharacteristically negative? Probably. This is the day of the dreaded prostate biopsy; revelation and consequences, the lady or the tiger. The moment of truth.

We all expect to live forever, to deny the death that happens to other less fortunate folks. We will remain healthy, happy, pain-free, free from John Wayne’s “the Big ‘C’, the unmentionable, sly, evasive, nasty little bit of metastasizing catastrophe which people whisper about with averted eyes, and which fills the local newspaper’s obituary page with little paragraphs and out-of-date photos of lost strangers’ ragged endings of life.

But for me, dear Horatio, I was expecting a happier ending to my play, this dizzying performance under the spotlights, in spite of the man behind the scrim whispering “elevated PSL’s”. How will this drama play out on the operating table today? Will the hero have a happy-ever-after epilogue? Will there be another act? And for how long? And what does it all mean anyway?

 

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2 comments:

Old Toad said...

May your biopsy bring good news and peace of mind, Richard!

Samaire Anson said...

have the results come back yet?

i, too, face every day with the obvious fact that one day i will die. being 26, i never realized that it would be so soon. i've been battling cancer for the past 10 years and must say, am growing quite tired.

wanted to thank you for your journal. makes me feel - alive.

*leslie.