I was going to end this Humility series yesterday—with the post about the humility my teaching career gave me. I knew perfectly well that there was a much more obvious and powerful source of it—but I’ve written about it a lot on this site, so I thought I’d give it a pass. Found out I couldn’t.
Age and Health.
I’ve been lucky in my life: Throughout much of it—most of it—I’ve been healthy and able to do the things I’ve wanted to. Until I started into my 60s I never had a debilitating illness or injury, just the occasional common cold, flu—that sort of thing. I did have the childhood illnesses: measles, mumps, etc. But that was about it.
But then came my sixties with a sequence of medical problems that are now clearly winning the competition between living and not.
Bell’s Palsy was first. Then, in late 2004, the diagnosis of prostate cancer that has resulted in a prostatectomy (removal), two rounds of radiation, immunotherapy, and a sequence of increasingly potent medications that have greatly diminished my physical life. (We’ll return to this.)
Some skin cancer and surgery—oh, my careless boyhood in the Oklahoma sun!
The last handful of years it’s some kind of weird neurological disorder that has stolen my balance—multiple tests and specialists have not discovered what it is. All they know (knowledge that has been obvious to me) is that it’s getting worse.
As I said, the cancer meds have gotten more and more powerful—with more and more odious side-effects.
As I’ve progressed through the sequence, the medical choices have diminished. My cancer is metastatic: The cancer has moved into my bones, and I am what I never thought I would be—incurable. All the meds can do is delay the inevitable.
I’m currently on one called Xtandi, which has been working (for the nonce), and when it no longer is effective, I will move to the final drug available (I forget the name). When its effectiveness declines, all that’s left is chemotherapy.
I’m not sure I’ll pursue chemo. It won’t save my life; it will just diminish it some more. I don’t really see the point.
So ... humility? Nothing quite like medical issues—especially incurable ones—to teach you that final lesson—to administer that final proficiency test that everyone fails.
Well, on that happy note I’ll close this series, grateful that I’ve done it, grateful that I won’t have to do it again!
And, meanwhile, I’ll enjoy my time with my son and his family, with my friends (most of whom I see only remotely now), and, of course, with Joyce, that remarkable woman whom I met—quite by accident—in Satterfield Hall in the summer of 1969 at Kent State University. Neither of us wanted to be in the class we were in—but the others were closed (and they weren’t the same). This December 20 will be our 52nd anniversary.
So how can I possibly complain about the arrival of something I knew would show up done day? Something I’ve ignored for as long as I could.
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