Da

Da

I am sick. Again.

Shout it from the rafters,  cry it  ‘cross the divide of time and space. I’m sick, sick as a dog.

Dogs….

I flash on Auden:

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,

Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,

Silence the pianos and with muffled drum

Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle in  fog white and thick;

Scribbling on the sky the message He Is sick, he is sick, he is sick

Terribly sick, crazily sick, deliriously sick.

Symptoms?  Of course I have symptoms!  What are you implying?

 I’ m coughing up all this mucous, I’m a little short of breath. My muscles ache.

I’ve become Richard Feder.

I’ve gained weight, my face broke out, I’m nauseous, I’m constipated, my feet swelled, my gums are bleeding, my sinuses are clogged, I got heartburn, I’m cranky and I have gas. What should I do?”

Did I mention the clamminess?

No fever, not short of breath, but with every breath, I emit a short musical note, that Sam, my pulmonary doctor, would  describe as a  little pitchy B sharp. 

I have a cold?   And for this pedestrian diagnosis  I gain no sympathy, just a  brief roll of the  eye, a sad shake of the head?

         You tell me I suffer from  a terminal case of lack of perspective.  I struggled through the valley of the shadow of death. Now that I dabble my toes in the warm waters of the stream of sullen misery, my symptoms seem…. Petty?

         And that’s the paradox.  Sick is sick,  regardless of whether a harbinger of lethal Strep Viuridans or a pesky rhinovirus.

 I’ve always been a cranky,whiny  patient.  A little  leukemia didn’t  change my basic nature. It just gave me a past, a context, a prisim through which I must judge all further illness.

          I woke last Tuesday achy and nauseous from  swallowed phlegm, I staggered to the bathroom, seeking succor. What sovereign medicines to sooth a fractured sinus system?

Abandoned Big Boy medicines spill from my medicine cabinet. How about a little zofran for the nausea? Nausea is nausea, after all, whether from  phlegm or chemotherapy.

         What about antibiotics? I spent the last month  explaining  to my patients they don’t need antibiotics for their cold symptoms. Yet, here I am in the bathroom, examining bottles of Gorillimycin as if they were rare vintages that could cleanse my body of its viral load .

I feel a little better, and visit Jeff for my yearly physical,  embarrassed I haven’t seen him in  three years . Three years have elapsed since I deigned visit a mere GP for  the  signs and symptoms of  middle age.  We talk of my  weight, up 16 pounds in three months. He listens to my lungs and orders an inhaler and a PSA that I refused when the reaper dwelled at my door.  Visiting Jeff always bothers me: Even if it leaves me terrified, I  don’t resent  visiting the cancer doctors, I  probably didn’t give myself cancer. I resent visiting a GP,  because I made myself overweight,   and therefore diabetic,hypertensive and  hyper lipidemic.

         We speak of my cold symptoms, and I’d rather talk of my leukemia, my badge of honor,  proof  I am bold, strong and proud. I don’t want to linger on my sinus symptoms, any pathetic wretch can catch cold. Any pathetic fool can cure him or herself of a viral illness, just  drink tea, complain to loved ones and  wait it out.

         I leave Jeff’s office thinking of Da, a  1970s Leonard Hughs play. Da revolves around a grown son whose father embarrasses him. The son returns to his ancestral home and finds his fathers’ ghost, who departs gaily  with the son who, in the end, realizes he can’t escape his past and must learn to live with bittersweet memories.

         I realize the Leukemia is my ghost.  It will always be a part of me, even after I move on to  silly, simple illness, its damp ache  will haunt my deepest fears and nightmares forever.

         I  turn the idea over in my head.  We are a  product of our pasts, and now I  am the proud possessor of a cocktail- party- stopping tale of valor and fear. And draining sinuses.        

         I wake in the night,  troubled. The leukemia reminds me of Da, but it dawns on me in the pre-dawn hour that  Da reminds me more of Da.

         This isn’t a blog about my childhood. I expect my proud papa is out there, reading this, honored to be a part of his  adult child’s life. I am grateful for the way I was raised, in an intellectual, affectionate household. I also know my parents’ words were sometimes unkind, and I carry their jibes with me, and forever  will.

         How often have I hurt my children with an ill-considered word?  I hope they’ve forgiven me, or, at very least, forgotten when I was too tired or ill to carefully consider my words.  

         Can’t change the past. Without the past, I’d be some whiny guy with a cold.  With all I’ve been through, I’m a whiny guy. With a cold. Who was really, really sick once.

         In the past.