Don't Sweat the Small Stuff

I've been trying to figure out why I seem to do everything in a rush. Maybe I'm just a New Yorker, and maybe taking my time is just not a part of my nature, but it strikes me as odd that I can't really do anything unless I'm in a hurry. When I eat, I want to finish what's in front of me, or on my fork, or in my mouth because I'm usually anxious to move on to the next flavor. The other night I was clipping my fingernails, and it was like I couldn't get through the ten nails fast enough because I was so anxious to stick myself right back in front of the television where I had been before.

The term "leisurely stroll" is really just a figure of speech to me. It doesn't matter how early, or even late, I am to wherever I'm going; if I'm walking, then I'm walking fast. When I played basketball in college, we were scolded if we were caught moving too slowly. Everything was expected to be done at "game speed," of course because the pace and focus employed during practice was the best predictor of our next game performance.

I would routinely run from basketball practice to a cappella rehearsal or to play rehearsal because my schedule was always jam-packed and I was overextended and that's just the way I liked it. It kept me out of trouble, or so I would say, though it really just made me budget my time well enough that I could still accomplish some mischief on the side of my academics, achievements and accolades.

In terms of my studies, I've never been able to plan anything too far ahead of its due date and then take my time giving it the proper research and preparation necessary to finish it in advance. For whatever reason, I prefer a time crunch. The pressure has always seemed to bring out the best in me, and I produce my best work under the most demanding circumstances. It's procrastination, pure and simple, but the fact is, I can't focus without a deadline breathing down my neck, and I've never written an outline. I always just wing it and figure out the structure of whatever I'm doing as I go along, organizing the pieces into what eventually becomes a coherent body of work. I've been told that it's because I'm a Libra, or just that I'm a fool, but whatever it is, it's not going to change now, and I'm pretty okay with it.

I'm inclined to believe that the activities of my daily routine would be more enjoyable if I could slow myself down enough to take the time to appreciate them. I'm so used to running from one thing to the next, starting with the first thing I do when I wake up and ending when I go to sleep, it just isn't natural for me to "stop and smell the roses."

At least, that's the way my life has always been until now. My natural rhythm is hurried, I'm high-strung, short-tempered, and I demand immediate results from both myself and those around me. But now, this has happened and it has changed everything. The speed at which I live my life has slowed to a crawl. Walking has become my new means of exercise, though my muscles seem to have forgotten their purpose. I have to take frequent breaks, and I'm not nearly as quick on my feet as I would like to be, or have been in the past.

It feels like everything is in slow motion, it's not just the way I walk. I get out of bed slowly in the morning because moving too fast makes me feel sick. I eat slowly because I want to make sure whatever it is goes down smoothly; hiccups are painful, throwing up is worse. I think slowly because I take morphine three times a day, unless I've just become dumber, and I'm not nearly active enough to justify my body maintaining the same metabolism that I'm used to having. I've been given no choice, especially with all of this free time on my hands, but to take plenty of time for consideration and reflection.

In the spirit of being positive, it can't be a bad thing to learn to appreciate some of the little things in life. Waking up on my own, without an alarm clock, is always a pleasantry. I don't have to put on a suit every morning and brave the commute, though breakfast has never been such an adventure. It is breakfast, after all, as long as it stays put.

Maybe it's some kind of blessing to be forced to slow down for a little while. I've always wondered about the next thing, trying to find the answers to the questions and the stories for the chapters in my life that haven't been written. But there's only so much I can figure out while spending the majority of my time in bed, on the couch, in front of the t.v., or wired to an I.V. drip.

It's all too common to rush through everything to the point where life becomes routine. I never want to feel like my life is mundane, like I know exactly what each day will look like before the sun rises. It's the way things are for me right now, but I fully expect to lead a normal life again someday, as long as I can get through this. My message, then, for myself and anyone else interested, is just to slow down for a moment every once in a while. You can all be thankful that your entire lives are not paused the way mine is, but you can still call a timeout when you want to. When you can't figure something out, you can take a step back, refine your approach, and go after it again. The relentless pursuit of satisfaction can be fulfilling, but also frustrating, because things will never go your way all the time. Patience and compromise can be ultimately rewarding, and seeing the big picture will usually overshadow the stresses of minutia (i.e. don't sweat the small stuff).

I'm allowing myself a chance to relax. I'll appreciate the time spent on my own, time for my own thoughts and prayers and imaginative tangents, and I'll also cherish the time I spend with others, because everyone's busy and it's nice to spend quality time with the people I care about. Surely, that's the lesson I'm supposed to be learning here and sharing with everyone else. It's the most sensible explanation for a complicated situation. I'm just biding my time on the bench until it's time to go back into the game.

The Two-Day Rule

When I used to lift weights, I would refer commonly to what I knew as the "two-day rule." It means that after lifting, you can usually expect to be sore not on the day immediately following the lift, but on the day after that, the "second day." Depending on the intensity or duration of the lift, you might be sore the very next day as well, but generally I knew my body and could anticipate the length and severity of my soreness. That way, I was prepared for the necessary rest, replenishment, and recovery my body needed to get stronger.

Today is my second day removed from a five-day chemo treatment. It's not quite the same, but I feel like my body has been beaten. I feel like a couple of tough guys got together and roughed me up a bit. And while it wouldn't be the first time I've ever taken a punch, at least in the past there was someone against whom I could defend myself. Right now, I've got two tender cheekbones, my chest hurts to the touch, laying down makes everything sore, I think I took a few shots to the legs, and to top it off my stomach is a mess so I might as well have taken a swift kick to the nuts along the way, too. This chemo is one bully the likes of whom I've never crossed.

The real beauty is that even though this last round was five days long, they pushed the start back a day to get all of those tests and scans in beforehand, and since we're trying to compress everything to make sure I really have no recovery time, I'm already supposed to be back there a week from today. So, in seven days, I'll be tied to the whipping post once again.

I know I've marveled before at the body's ability to rehabilitate itself. We tear our skin off, and it usually grows back. We bang, bruise, and sprain our joints and bones and ligaments and, in most cases, our bodies can find a way to piece them back together. But it still amazes me that one simple mistake; one false move in a million routine patterns of seemingly functional insignificance could spell irreparable disaster. I mean, really, our cells divide and duplicate themselves all day long since the moment of conception, and all that has to happen is a "D" gets flipped for an "A" and the formula is ruined. The new creation is a tumor; a downward-spiraling, ticking timebomb of destruction in our brains or spinal cavities, and for some reason it isn't the same as any other kind of thing because our bodies don't have an answer for it. It just doesn't make sense how our bodies can be so evolved, yet so fragile and so vulnerable at the same time.

Where would we be without modern medicine? I was born with pyloric stenosis, which means that the opening between my stomach and small intestine was too narrow, so I wasn't digesting any food and if it hadn't been for a fairly modern surgery, I wouldn't even be around to be fighting this new and ever-more exciting medical anomaly. I don't even mean to joke about it; I'm afraid I should be a little weary of trying to beat this because maybe I'm just testing fate by relying so much on medical technology. Maybe it's just a matter of time before my body comes up with something ahead of our diagnostical capabilities, and then I'm screwed. I shouldn't even say that, though, lest I forget for a moment the monster in my bones whose wrath I'm praying will lie dormant for the remainder of eternity.

I've digressed so far from my original direction that I'm not sure anymore where I'm going with this. I suppose I could reiterate the point that as long as I'm still kicking, and as long as I've got a shot, things could always be worse. And that's a sentiment worth repeating. There's always someone whose monster won't go to sleep, no matter what Molotov cocktail of drugs and poison the medical miracle-makers can concoct to throw at it.

Good people, better than I, are doomed to such a fate. The thought of it just seems to drain all of the air out of the room. But it makes me want to be better. I know those people won't stop fighting until that final breath, and that's a lifetime's worth of inspiration for me. I will forever hesitate to take a simple moment in this life for granted, though it will probably take some getting used to, because I've never lived that way before. But, having thought about it, there's really no other way to live. It's all just too fleeting and too ephemeral to fail to take the time we do have here to try and be better. I'm going to be better to myself, more forgiving of my mistakes, better to those around me and to those close to me, because they deserve it. We all deserve it because if we don't start treating people better, nobody ever will. Nobody's going to do it for us, but if we each make that small adjustment to be a slightly happier, friendlier, more accepting or more welcoming individual, the implications could be enormous. Tragedy will still exist, and unspeakable misfortune will befall the few, but it seems like a no-brainer to me that fewer strangers means more friends and more love and that breaking down some of the other barriers that pervade our volatile social coexistence might only tempt fate to be more forgiving. Maybe it could work, and maybe fewer monsters would sneak up from inside of us. Maybe it wouldn't work, and not a whole lot would change, but foregiveness is still a powerful thought.

Forgiving my body its mistake won't erase the tumor it created, but holding onto that grudge and refusing to forgive won't get rid of it either, so it's a matter of the kind of person I'm going to be. I'd imagine that if those with gloomier prognoses than I can find it in their hearts to forgive their own conditions, then I sure as hell can, too. And if we could all learn to forgive just a little bit better, then fewer people might actually be recovering from an old-fashioned ass-whooping, or worse, the way my body's feeling today. That's something I'll gladly hope for.

Determination

When my ex-girlfriend and I began our "break," I thought it would be noble or worthwhile or fulfilling on my part to begin counting the days, or months, or even years until we could once again be together. After a few days, it occurred to me that the day might never come when we would reuinite, so my endeavor would be entirely in vain, trying to prove something to someone that just doesn't need proving. People grow up, people grow apart, people change in some of the most unforeseeable ways and there's just nothing that any of us can do about it. The truth of the matter is that the day may never come again when we make sense for one another, and chronicling my daily sufferance on a flimsy notepad was not going to change that.

It seems to me that counting my remaining days of chemotherapy is much more timeworthy, especially considering that it has a planned end date.

Today is the fifth and final day of the current five-day chemo. Needless to say, I'm anxious to go home. After two Bone Marrow Biopsies, a bone scan, an EKG, and little to watch on television, I'm yearning for a comfortable bed.

After today, I will have completed 21 of 49 chemo days. It still leaves a lot to be done, but it's six of the fourteen rounds overwith and so far I've come out halfway alright.

Nothing is ever going to be perfect, and even having the audacity to expect it to be so is like asking for punishment. A relationship may disappear without explanation or understanding, health may deteriorate in a similarly mysterious fashion, and we are left to our own means of coping with the situations that arise.

Like I said, I still have a long way to go. Eight more rounds of chemo, plus scans and vaccines and radiation and whatever else they decide to throw at me, but right now, at the end of this lengthy cycle, the battle doesn't seem as far uphill as it has in the past. Maybe the nausea and dizziness will kick in and take care of that, but right now, in this very moment, I'm determined. And determination can certainly accomplish a lot of unlikely feats.