A probable allergy to chapstick
followed by shingles—not the kind on your roof—has made the past week anything
but dull. Now everything seems to be settling down. My lips aren't swollen and
itchy anymore and we caught the shingles very early, before they started to
hurt instead of just tingle mildly. If nothing else it's been a good reminder
that while treatment has largely been going smoothly the last half-year, I
still am very much a cancer patient. My current treatment might not be
half as grueling as what I’ve been through in the past, and I might feel fine
most of the time, but I still can't really count on my good health. At least,
not enough to make many long-term plans.
Aside from the traveling for fun we may want to do, made difficult
by my weekly chemo infusions, far more important life-goals and plans are also
still on hold. My wife and I moving out on our own seems unattainable right
now. Partly the specter of an ACA repeal means we'll likely have to stay in New
York State for me to have reliable health insurance not tied to employment. Beyond
that though, getting conventional jobs seems nearly impossible. Even the substitute
teaching work my wife has been picking up lately became highly inconvenient
this past week as I visited and phoned different doctors to figure out what was
going on. Much of today was spent just communicating with different doctors
both here in Corning and in New York City to change the dosage of a medication,
order more prescriptions, and make sure everyone was on the same page. It’s a
two person job to manage all that. There’s a lot less to do now than there was
two years ago when I was just starting treatment, but it’s still a
time-consuming task, and managing my healthcare remains our primary job. I don’t
know when or even if I’ll be able to work a normal job again, and that’s beyond
my control.
Writing, long my hobby and more recently a serious career
aspiration, might help with that eventually. But a career in writing is in many
ways no more under my control than my health. Yes, it’s up to me to spend a lot
of time writing, editing, and getting feedback, and I do that as best I can. I'm
now about halfway through book two in The Legacy of Rythka, the fantasy series I've been
working on over the last year, and I've made
some decent headway on another book too. But at the end of the day I need a
publisher to like my book. Largely that lies beyond my control. I need people
to enjoy reading what I write too; again, not really within my sphere of influence.
It feels at times like there is very little in my life that I do control.
And that feeling is spot on. Not
much in life is within our control or even falls under our ability to influence.
Our culture fosters the illusion of control, and it is easy to forget how
little power we really have. We plan and schedule our days, we believe our hard
work will pay off, and we take for granted that we’re living longer than ever.
And to an extent we should. It’s easy to give up and stop caring about much without
some feeling of control. Believing everything in life will play out as it will
regardless of our own efforts is far too extreme a view in the other direction.
But we cannot see the future and we cannot know how our lives will play out.
All we can do is try our best, and remember that we are not as powerful as we like
to think.
No comments:
Post a Comment