I had a consultation this afternoon with the surgeon who performed my latest operation, in July.
We have a very cordial relationship built upon mutual respect, and we indulge in precious little beating around the bush.
He told me that future surgeries at this point seem futile. As anxious as he is to help me, my body seems just as determined to destroy itself. My surgical history is a long, painful, expensive series of failures. For the record, I'm 0 for 5 over the past six years, 0 for 6 overall. As the surgeon put it, operations seem to help me for about 10 minutes, and then the situation reverts to what it was, and with a vengeance.
I expected this conclusion, in large part because I felt it within myself. It's not rocket science. I knew, especially after July's unsuccessful surgery, that we were reaching the point of diminishing returns.
Given the progression of the illness and its ability to thrive as well as it has, he said that it may well come to pass that I'll be incapacitated within six months. I'm not so sure about that timing. Especially if I have something to say about it.
But, I agree that my joint pain, which has led to decreasing mobility, is going to prevail at some point, quite possibly sooner rather than later. And my headaches, which occur several times a day and can be debilitating, are likely here to stay, as they have now for years.
I'll learn to adapt to all that, hopefully. But what most scares me is that I'll lose my mental faculties. I need to live this, and to know that I'm living it. I need to be aware. This is important.
My doctors and I are going to explore the possibility of radiation therapy, knowing from the start that this cancer doesn't respond well, if at all, to radiation. But because the therapy won't do much damage, we have little to lose.
The focus now is on making me as comfortable as modern medicine can, and keeping pain at manageable levels.
A friend suggested I get a second opinion, even a third. But my surgeon is one of the world's top specialists in this disease, and I have the best minds at two of the world's leading hospitals employing everything but alchemy to try to help me. And alchemy may come next.
Sure, I could go around to different doctors until I find one who tells me what I want to hear, but one of my mentors has a term for that: mind-fucking one's self. The indelicate imagery is dead-on. Reality is what it is, whether or not you accept it.
Tonight, I spoke to a friend of mine who is a Zen priest. I plan to receive the Buddhist precepts from her within a month or two, forgoing the usual year's preparation for what is called the
jukai ceremony. I began the process a couple of years ago and got a few months into it before my laziness prevailed.
Time was a luxury then.
It isn't now.
I feel the need to declare my spiritual and philosophical beliefs as a way of addressing the tremendous doubt and sometimes paralyzing fear I feel within me. And the
jukai ceremony certainly is a public declaration.
Who knows, I may recant everything when my final moment arrives. Nonetheless, I think
jukai will be useful. If I'm misleading myself about my motives for
jukai, then my priest friend will be the first to tell me -- if I don't beat her to the punch.
I'm simultaneously comfortable with and terrified by the unknown.
Maybe
jukai is just me grasping at straws.
I'm not sure I've fully processed all that has happened this momentous day. It certainly has a dreamlike quality. I've gone over and over what was said by my doctor, what was said by me. At times, I've choked up and have felt tears form in my eyes. I also realize the inevitability of all of this -- for me, for you, for us all, and this gives me great comfort. Some very difficult and conflicting emotions are waging war within me now, and I hope peace and acceptance soon prevail.
This has been a difficult post to write, not at all the way I wanted it to come out.
But life is like that.
I've been expecting you
but not eagerly
Won't you have some tea?
