"It may not get better, but it certainly is going to get worse."

Entry 1   5:02 p.m.  

"It may not get better, but it certainly is going to get worse."

        --Dr. F, my therapist.


Friday morning with Buddy,
coffee and the
maple tree view.
Whoo. More productive at work than I have been in a while, and yet, I feel like I am carrying an an anchor on my back. It is tough. Doc is afraid I have succumbed to depression, and has urged me to seek help. Thanks, Doc. While insightful and lovely to talk to, I get about as much therapeutic help from her as I do watching Dr. Phil. 

Sigh. 

I have moved to feeling listless. Unmotivated. Last night's word salad journal entry aside, I speak about as much as a chair when I get here.  I hate it. Dr. F. did rightly point out that while things may or may not get better over time, in the short run they are certainly going to get much worse.  

True.  We did discuss, besides my gloom factory mind, that it is hard to know whether knowing or not knowing is better or worse.  Jenny not doing research, for instance, and my incessant need to read every bleeding article on PDAC, ostensibly to understand something, albeit I have no idea what.

We also discussed something that I finally understand. It's never too late to realize it. I hate not knowing I told her, even though I realize life is not knowing.  She, my therapist, said it's like being watched over by the Greek gods, and fuck me if she isn't right.  I thought about the parallels between Oedipus trying to thwart the vision of the oracle and compared that with people thinking they can control what happens to their bodies, not understanding that the Gods just don't give a fuck what you do. It's Jim Fix, the runner who sold millions on jogging, dying of a heart attack while, of all things, jogging. Or, its the owner of the Segway Corp. accidentally driving his Segway  off a cliff. It's Lou Gehrig, at the height of his career being knocked down by ALS. Jenny getting PDAC. It is, as my father would say, being fucked by the fickle finger of fate.

I need to get out of the house. 


 

"The only end of writing is to enable the readers better to enjoy life, or better to endure it."

        -Samuel Johnson













AURORA covers The Beatles 'Across The Universe' for Like A Version - YouTube

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Life, A Cascading Series of Disappointment

Image
Jenny has cancer.  Terminal cancer.  We learned that in late July. Jenny had  dropped 25 lbs. in the spring without trying.  She had been having vague stomach complaints since October.  As a balm for her concerns, her doctor agreed to do a CT scan for her, but told her they would find nothing.  Jenny wanted to rule out pancreatic cancer, which had recently killed her dad-in the spring of 2019.  Her mother had been sick with lymphoma since February 2020.  The day of the scan, the doctor told Jenny they would get results back in a few days. When Jenny's phone rang that same afternoon, I was in the living room with Abby, where I was torturing her by playing the Rapping Duke on Youtube. Jenny shouted from the room, "Geoff, get in here, the doctor's on the phone." "You have a four cm. mass on your pancreas,"  he said. Jenny made a sound like someone had punched her in the stomach.  "There is a spot on your liver. You have a necrotic lymph nod...
Read more

Still Muddling Through Somehow

Image
At the park, I walked my dog through the rain this morning— not really proper rain— more like air that has decided to shrug water at you out of habit. It suited my mood well enough. As I walked, my thoughts kept returning to the same small universe they often do. They are not new thoughts. They orbit the same losses. They consider the same betrayals, the same questions that never resolve. They have been captured, these thoughts, never to escape, never to be forgotten, never to burn up in the atmosphere. It is simply the gravitational field of my life now. What might seem or feel like self-pity is more like muscle memory, which tells me I need more exercise. The holidays are here, and Christmas has always been central to my life, atheist that I am. It was stitched into Jenny’s life — the love of Christmas — at least as strongly as it was stitched into mine. We carried that love forward with the kids, year after year, without ever needing to talk about why it mattered; it just did. I...
Read more

Don't Do It, Don't Do It, Oh, Lord

Image
It Hurts, It Hurts So Bad.  .  . 3:44 a.m. I walked in the door last night at just before 10 to find Jenny in a ball on the floor--between the giant ottoman and sectional--agonizing pain in her hip. I had ridden to acting with the student driver.  But, let's back up. Jenny had chemo yesterday.  Her friend Jennifer took her.  It was uneventful and she received chemo.  I, as always, prepared the house for her arrival to make sure she wanted for nothing and would be comfortable as she endures the aftermath of all that poison.  Sometime before she came home, she texted, saying the doctor suggested she try Aleve for her hip pain.  Aleve.   She asked me to pick some up for her while Abby was at acting.   During the text exchange I realized she would be alone after Abby and I left for acting.  Leiney was elsewhere and had therapy at 5 and kickboxing later, and her sister Moni had bailed on chemo because she had so much to do (Wit...
Read more