November 15, 2015

They say don't sweat the small things in life. That might be sage advice for many; don't stress over the little things that really don't mean all that much, and your life will likely contain far less angst. Keeping minor inconveniences in perspective is certainly healthy, and building a lifestyle where anxiety is minimized is easier on you and the people around you. That's all well and good. I'm sure it works for lots of people, and that's great. But it doesn't work for me. I like to sweat the small things. I like to overreact to little annoyances, like a wrinkle in my shirt that lies uncomfortably against my back, or when I feel too hot, or any number of equally trivial, mildly bothersome conditions. Most of the things I like to get worked up over have to do with being physically uncomfortable, now that I think on it. They're silly little things, and I know it's silly to get upset over them. That's part of the fun, in fact. My shirt is wrinkled, I freak out, then I make fun of myself for freaking out. Freaking out about little things gives me a necessary outlet for expressing stress and frustration, and laughing at myself for getting worked up about minor inconveniences helps me keep them in perspective and remember that really, they are pretty meaningless. But meaningless as the things I stress about are, it is a helpful, useful practice for me.

By stressing out and sweating over the small stuff, I feel much more free to remain calm when it comes to serious matters. Everyone has stress, and everyone needs to express their frustrations and let off steam. Either we vent our frustrations in healthy ways or we erupt eventually. I choose to vent several times a day typically, never for very long, and never over anything important. It works for me. I believe it is more helpful to stay at ease and focus on what needs to be done when it comes to serious problems. I'd rather have the presence of mind and the clarity to react in the best possible way were I to, say, find myself in an impending car crash or with a morbid cancer diagnosis. I wouldn't want to freak out and panic if my ability to stay calm and drive well in an emergency situation could help minimize damage and injury. I wouldn't want to worry myself to death over my low chances of surviving my cancer. So I don't. For me, having an almost-constant supply of minor annoyances to stress about whenever I need to vent a little is extremely helpful and frees me of stress when it comes to the real problems in life.

Now, I certainly should not and can not give myself too much credit for this. I naturally am very laid back, and I, by whatever combination of nature and nurture, tend to not worry about, well, much at all. I'm not anxious or stressed by default, and I often live in a world where I happily ignore problems as much as I can and enjoy life, despite what might be going wrong around me. This can be really problematic when there are serious problems that require my attention, like getting a job or making other important decisions. It's also saved me and the people around me time and again throughout the past year. Looking back, I'm pretty sure I took my diagnosis better than anyone else. More on that next week, but I think a lot of that is just the way I am, through no credit of mine. So I really cannot say that my habit of worrying unduly over minor annoyances, giving me a healthy outlet to vent my frustrations, is how I managed to stay calm and happy this past year. A good part of that is just the way I am by default. And I certainly do not suggest that everyone try worrying about every little thing, in an attempt to live a more stress-free life. I do think that it is worth reconsidering the old adage though. Sometimes, sweating the small stuff is freeing, constructive, and healthy. For me at least, it helps me stay calm and focused when the big stuff comes my way.

November 8th, 2015

One of the lessons I have learned best this past year is to be less judgmental. I used to, more often than I'd like to admit, assume I knew enough about someone to scoff at them or talk disparagingly about them or their actions, just from a quick first impression. For example, I might see someone struggling to walk a clearly untrained dog and look down on them, judging them as a poor dog owner. Driving poorly around me was, and still is, a pretty good way to get me to judge you. Less problematically, I might see someone who looks healthy and assume they are, or I might assume someone is as rich or poor as they appear.

But it occurred to me one day as I was walking hand-in-hand with my wife that anyone could easily look at us and judge wrongly, and even be jealous of our lives. Nobody should be jealous of my life, after all. I have cancer, for crying out loud, and if anyone knew that, surely they'd pity me, not envy me. Clearly, assuming things about people based on just a first impression is dangerous and unhealthy. But I think there were really two lessons to learn there, because when I stop to think about it, there are actually plenty of potential reasons for others to be jealous of my life. For one, I am happy. A lot of people simply aren't, and while my life may not be perfect, and while I would willingly trade a great deal to be healthy and cancer-free for many, many years, I also have plenty for which I should be extremely grateful. Maybe it isn't so absurd after all, to think that someone might be jealous of my life. It's certainly food for thought, and a compelling reminder to appreciate the good in life, no matter how much bad there might be as well.

Returning to my main point here though. Thinking about what others might assume when looking at my wife and I highlighted, in my mind, the main problem with assuming you know anything about anyone just by looking at them. Looking at us, you would never know I spent the last year going through brutal cancer treatments. I look a bit too skinny, but I could easily pass for a long-distance runner, someone in great shape. At least, until anyone sees me try to run. For all appearances though, we look like a typical happy, healthy couple. And that really stuck with me. I don't know, from just looking at anyone, what their story may be, where they are in life, or why they're doing what they're doing.

Someone who looks healthy could be just like me, and have recently made it through a long period of hellish cancer treatment. They could even now have cancer that has yet to be discovered. Perhaps the reason they're on the phone while drifting out of their lane is that they're currently receiving terrible news over the phone as they drive. They could be poor as dirt, and wearing the one nice set of clothing they own as they head to an interview for a job they desperately need. Or conversely, they might be wealthy, and wearing grungy clothing because they're doing grungy, manual labor. They could be a professional dog trainer working with a troublesome dog for the very first time. Even the people in New York City that I cannot help but laugh at inside, who push their little dogs around in strollers, might have a reason for their apparent silliness. Maybe their dogs are old, and can only manage part of their normal walk now, so the stroller allows them to make it home without unduly stressing their arthritic joints. Who knows. The point is, without knowing someone's full story, without understanding the whole situation, it is impossible to say what is really going on, impossible to judge the people or the situation, even if it was my job to do so, which it really, really is not.

For me, it's a reminder to give people more grace, to not concern myself with all the things other people do that I might not agree with, or that I find annoying. They could have a good reason for their actions. They might not. It really doesn't matter. Unless I get to know someone and understand their circumstances, I cannot even begin to judge them fairly. And once I do know someone, once I understand everything they're going through, I really won't want to judge them at all.

November 2nd, 2015

Sorry it has been so long since I last wrote anything here. The last few weeks have been a bit tough, and I really have not felt up to writing, nor have I had the clarity of mind to come up with anything worth saying. Also my computer finally showed its age and no longer works. I'm very thankful for google drive, where I long-ago started saving everything of importance, knowing that my computer's days were numbered. Anyways, I'm hoping to get back to posting weekly here.

It is a strange thing, to have finished all my planned treatment (for now at least), and to feel worse than I have since last December or January, when treatment was just starting and things were pretty rough. I feel like I should feel all better, and be getting on with the things I want to do in life. Instead I spend 95% of the day just sitting there, trying to eat minuscule portions of food and keep it down, trying to kill time and get through another day, hoping that the next will be better. But I really cannot tell a difference from one day to the next. When I look back three or four days, I can tell I'm doing a little better, but certainly I make no discernible improvement over the course of just one day. It is a frustratingly slow process, one that makes me think of radiation as, in some ways, the worst part of my treatment this past year. Sure, chemo might have stronger effects, and make them known almost immediately. Yes, major abdominal surgery is tougher, though not for nearly as long. Radiation, by comparison, is an insidious and sneaky little bugger.

All I did was lie there on a table while a big fancy machine slowly circled me. It's not like I was cut open from sternum to pelvis, or pumped full of poison. I just had to hold still. Nothing even touched me. The first week or two I couldn't have even told you if the machine was really emitting radiation or if it was just a placebo. But now, over three weeks removed from the last day of radiation, I can tell you in no uncertain terms that yes, my insides were getting zapped. Compared to chemo, where a good night's sleep would often lesson the side-effects considerably, this healing process is agonizingly slow. Compared to one of my major surgeries, I now, three and a half weeks out, feel about the same as I would four or maybe five days removed from surgery. I'm eating the same amount of food, and feel about as sore in my stomach. At least with radiation there's no NG tube though, or staples, IVs, and epidurals to come out yet. So I try to be grateful for that, at least.

It all makes me wonder though what things in my life are like radiation therapy. As a preface, this is going to be a rather imperfect analogy. Chemotherapy, surgery, and radiation have all saved my life, and I am immensely grateful for the level of medical care I have received. I am really only talking here about treatments and their side-effects, not their long-term, life-saving effects.

So what, in life, is like radiation therapy? Certainly there are obvious chemos and surgeries in our lives, those blatantly unhealthy or destructive habits or practices we all have that can so clearly damage our lives, our relationships, our souls. Holding on to hatred, failing to forgive, becoming enslaved to money or food or power...These are not so difficult to see, even in our own lives, which are of course much harder to examine than the lives of others. These kinds of habits and their consequences are hard to miss. But what about the radiation therapy, the insidious, sneaky little buggers that we don't even realize are happening until there is obvious damage already done?

As my wife could tell you, mine is comfort, mingled with laziness. If it's easier to not go out of my way or do something thoughtful, 9 times out of 10 that's the course I'll take. If it's easier to sit and read or watch a movie for three hours than it is to talk to someone and invest in a relationship, that'll be what I do.There's certainly nothing wrong with reading a good book or spending a lazy Saturday afternoon watching college football. They definitely wouldn't compare, in most people's minds, to holding a grudge, or stopping at nothing to gain more power and influence, no matter how many people get trampled on your way up. And that is why such things are sneaky.

Like lying on a radiation table while a machine moves around you and nothing noticeable happens to your body, a lazy afternoon seems harmless. And, if it doesn't happen too often, it is harmless. If I had only gotten one or two days of radiation therapy, I would hardly have the same struggles I'm facing now, after 20 treatments. When we make habits of wasting time, or of putting merely acceptable activities in front of truly meaningful investments of our time, the long-term effects can be just as painful for us as the consequences of more obvious wrongdoings. While holding grudges can make one bitter, hateful, and unable to receive forgiveness from others or even oneself, habitually choosing to spend too much time on simply unobjectionable activities over genuinely meaningful ones can leave one's life just as empty. It's something I know I need to work on, though feeling genuinely unable to do much more than sit around all day is the perfect excuse for me to make every day a lazy one where I spend far too much time doing OK things, and nowhere near enough time doing anything meaningful. I'll work on it though. Tomorrow. When I'm feeling better. Or so I keep telling myself...