tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3458341.post6651495745798827883..comments2024-01-06T10:36:04.084-05:00Comments on A Commonplace Blog: Diagnosed with cancerD. G. Myershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10659136455045567825noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3458341.post-21561952996992796282014-01-16T11:02:13.591-05:002014-01-16T11:02:13.591-05:00An interesting post and comments, too--would be in...An interesting post and comments, too--would be interesting to look at fiction and cancer and where they intersect as vehicles of estrangement from the ordinary and as catalysts of change.Marly Youmanshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02377938366750387442noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3458341.post-41214857750562212492011-04-10T13:30:56.584-04:002011-04-10T13:30:56.584-04:00Clearly, everyone dealing with it has to make indi...Clearly, everyone dealing with it has to make individual choices. In my personal experience, there were two parallel battles, tightly linked.<br />In the physical battle of surgery and chemo, I could help determine strategy, but I was a passenger dealing with the day to day outcomes. But my mental battle had a decisive impact on everything.<br />To me, it held on to the dignity of being human, continue the fight without drowning in everything, and with that, create lasting meaning for me. The battle truly was one to fight for life through physical means like maintaining exercise despite significant pain and physical discomfort, and the mental effort to move out of depression and the passivity it creates, the will just to let go.<br />It was crystalized for me one night in the oncology ward after a serious crisis 4 nights before, when my Dr.s fought for my physical survival through 6 hours of crises before i stabilized. In recovery, I felt very week and ill, and without dignity - tubes, every orifice monitored, and the inability to clean myself properly or do anything without help. I was not doing well, and I realized I had the choice to let go, and leave all the suffering behind, or to truly keep fighting and get out.<br />I chose life. It was another four months of struggle.<br />But two years later, it is but a memory that I have to hold on to to remember and cherish!<br />I truly believe that that kind of choice matters and impacts the outcome. To me, cancer truly was a battle for life, the hardest one I ever fought.Harald Striepehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06582880871632720395noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3458341.post-87529793864779922382011-04-07T11:44:25.965-04:002011-04-07T11:44:25.965-04:00Thank you, a wonderful post. Thank you. Cheers, Ke...Thank you, a wonderful post. Thank you. Cheers, KevinInterpolationshttp://interpolations.wordpress.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3458341.post-29420461214805826572011-04-05T17:48:08.601-04:002011-04-05T17:48:08.601-04:00Adlai,
I could not disagree more. Of course, my w...Adlai,<br /><br />I could not disagree more. Of course, my wife is a physician.<br /><br />Nor did my oncologist—a genius and a <i>mentsh</i>—ever tell me to “fight” the disease or imply that I was somehow the “poorer” for it. What he reminded me, regularly, wss that there is a wide difference between the textbook course of a disease and the way it actually works itself out in an individual person’s life.<br /><br />—DavidD. G. Myershttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10659136455045567825noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3458341.post-7709994585189295822011-04-05T17:44:39.283-04:002011-04-05T17:44:39.283-04:00Fabio,
Let me put it somewhat differently, then. ...Fabio,<br /><br />Let me put it somewhat differently, then. Cancer reduces you to necessity of making changes. These do not necessarily include giving up your life-threatening bad habits. To keep them up, in the face of terminal illness, is itself a change. Their significance is now different.<br /><br />—DavidD. G. Myershttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10659136455045567825noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3458341.post-61443584167175050382011-04-05T17:28:07.285-04:002011-04-05T17:28:07.285-04:00This is why I am irritated when I am told to “figh...This is why I am irritated when I am told to “fight” my cancer. Perhaps the drugs which are administered to me can be said to “fight” the cancer. At best I am ringside at the fight.<br /><br />It seems that professionals, and not the medical kind, like to encourage one "fight" cancer or any other serious disease. It comes from their earning psychosis: everything they have in life, they've earned, including their good health. If you're sick, boy, that's like being poor--you've let something slide, you've stopped doing the work. Don't be poor, and don't be sick, if you want to have their friendship. Why bother? Just tell them that you're not friends with robots but only with human beings. They will huff and puff and the "implication," but in the end they will just fall away. The true friend stands by you, even when you're homeless. Of course, such friendship is seen as maudlin and perhaps crazy by the professional class.AJnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3458341.post-21366965722874475982011-04-05T17:13:42.057-04:002011-04-05T17:13:42.057-04:00"A diagnosis of cancer is a life-changing eve..."A diagnosis of cancer is a life-changing event, and the only question is what changes to make."<br /><br />This is a crucial question -- for everyone, I think, even those who haven't been diagnosed with cancer. Can we ourselves decide "what changes to make", though? What does it take to go through a transformation that goes beyond mere superficiality? We read so many books, we get married and have kids and go to work and maybe even become "religious". But do we really change? What kind of Experience does it take, to change with profundity, if even the threat of death doesn't seem to do it?<br /><br />My father, already in advanced stages of emphysema, and knowing full well his own father had died of this same disease, refused to heed the doctor's order and continued smoking, saying to himself he had no problem with dying. He only quit a couple of years back when a greater fear was struck into his heart as he heard the physician say to him: "the problem here is not dying, but having a stroke or worse -- and then your wife will have to take care of a living vegetable."<br /><br />I am thus reminded of a phrase of George Bernanos' (my translation): "We ought to know that the threat that weighs upon us all is not only of dying, but of dying like imbeciles". ("Il faut que nous sachions bien que la menace pesant sur nous tous n'est pas seulement de mourir, c'est de mourir comme des imbéciles”.)Fabiohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09700598057503097520noreply@blogger.com