A Somewhat Normal Day ...

I posted here not long ago about the wonder of the normal, about how our quotidian routines can bore us--until we can no longer experience them. (Link to that post from Dec. 17, 2017.)

Visitors to this site know that my past few weeks have been far from my normal. I've been undergoing immunotherapy for my metastatic prostate cancer, a process that began on January 16 and did not officially cease until the past Friday.

I say "officially cease" because I had some lingering after-effects that did not soften, really, until late yesterday and on into today. Some mild nausea, extreme weariness, some disorientation and dizziness.

Because of all of this--and you can add to the mix the flu that Joyce and I "enjoyed" early in my treatments, an illness that disrupted all and caused some scheduling hassles for everyone involved--my normal routines altered considerably.

• I have not been able to go to the health club and exercise in several weeks. (Okay, this is not exactly my favorite thing to do, and I must say that I preferred the afternoon naps to the stationary bike and rowing machine!). Still, I know I must do it--go to the club--for a variety of reasons.
• I had a catheter installed to ease the process of infusion, so I've been unable to take a shower or shave for two and a half weeks. So, into the bathtub I went, a place I have not regularly gone since early in our marriage when we lived in humble shower-less apartments and rental properties.
• Compounding this: I could not get the catheter area wet, so Joyce had to wash my hair for me while I sat in the tub like a wannabe Moby-Dick (very white, increasingly cetacean because of my inability to exercise) and clutched to my neck (the catheter's entry point) a towel.
• Some days I have just not been strong enough to go over to Open Door Coffee Co., where I normally spend a few hours (mornings, afternoons) reading and writing and whatever.
• And--one that doesn't seem so odious (but was): I was unable to sleep on my side (a favorite) and instead had to spend all night on my back. This, I know, is hardly oppressive, but it was new and frustrating for me.

But today--Mr. Normal returned (somewhat). Last night I slept some on my side, and today I was able to shower, to shave, to walk over to the coffee shop, to do my work there, to walk home, to sit in my grandfather Osborn's desk chair and type these words of relief. And gratitude.

One other vaguely related insight: I would invite all politicians (and others) who oppose universal health care to spend a day walking around Seidman Cancer Center, sitting in the waiting areas, talking with patients and their loved ones. Watching the physical and psychological suffering. (Mine, by the way, is minimal by comparison.)

If you emerge from such an experience still believing that health care is a privilege rather than a right--an act of government overreach rather than a humane act of collective empathy and compassion--well, it's evident that your soul has somehow escaped you and fled in terror from such a pure and disturbing and reeking darkness.