Journal of the post plague year: The Whitney

The Whitney was crowded but I felt fine. The Whitney Museum of American art recently re opened in downtown Manhattan after a long run on the Upper East Side. I missed the Whitney. My old friends, the Hoppers, the Picassos and the absurdly obscene instillations were back on display. I roamed room-to-room seeking out my old pals. I ran into my old friend George Bellows and we both watched the Dempsey – Firpo fight.*

This was a new experience Not the art, but the disorientation of being well. Chronic disease is a constant logistical battle. The mind spins with desperate, absurd, surreal questions. Where is the nearest bathroom? Sip of water? Where can I lie down if/when I feel sick? If I had to leave, where is the nearest bed? The nearest hotel room, the next train back home? Each medication carries its own cacophony of side affects and Graft versus host disease is like firing a machine gun into the night. You don’t know where the next bullet will hit but when it does, there will be pain. Will my 4 ½ year old white cells declare Fatwa against my liver again? My mouth? My skin?

The battlefield was clear today. The analogy of cancer to war is excellent: You win the war but the insurgents hole up and occasionally descend into town, taking no prisoners and raising havoc, when you were certain peace had been declared .

But oddly, this piece isn’t about me. It’s about Cynthia.

Dear Cynthia , who stood by me for the past 8 years of this non ending psycho and melodrama.

Now its her turn to search for the closest place to find cool water, a life saving snack, a clean and near-by bed.

Her destroying angel came in the form of Spondolithiasis. For years her back had slowly dteriorated. If the spine is a stack of quarters, her spine was more like a game of Jengah where the wooden sticks are pushed askew. Eventually the stack collapses, the game is over, and it’s time for serious surgery. Six weeks ago she had back surgery where surgeons trimmed the overhanging vertebrate that were pressing on her nerves. The surgeons then made a paste from her bones and spackled the transformed spine to rebuild the whittled column that had been her backbone.

Back at the Whitney, I rush over to greet my old fried Frank Stella, who is hanging out against a wall . Cyn follows behind, walking slowly, pain etched on her face.

“What’s wrong?" I ask from reflex. I know that face , the one that means “I’ve hit the wall, I’ve overdone it and I need to retreat.” I have a similar face.

And I want to say “I know how you feel. I know exactly how you feel. I know what it’s like to be 77 miles from your bottle of pain medication and realize you must spend the next 4 hours seeking out and returning with the life saving elixir.

I don’t want to say “I know how you feel” because she’ll say, “You can’t possibly know.”

The conversation will degrade into a sad rumination on who suffers more. Please, Cyn not in front of Frank

I an amazed and terrified by the similarities of our experiences, the feeling one can’t go another step, the nihilistic feeling life will be a series of painful moments, unending until the grave’s perfect peace.

She makes the same ridiculous statements I used to say. “I’ll never be better.” “ I’m sure the treatment didn’t work, They’re lying to me.”

I find myself having doppelganger conversations:

“I’ll never feel better again”

Of course you will

No, no, I will never feel whole again

Of course you will

It is as if we are auditioning for the same role in a play and we pass the script back and forth to see who sounds more sincere in each role.

Cyn has taken on a dreadful habit I once enjoyed: She wakes and rates the day ‘ Today will be a B-. Today will be an F. I once did the same. No need now, I’m settling into that B+/A- state that's good for most but will keep you out of medical school.

What amazes me is that Cyn and I are so different. I am everything she is not. I am maudlin , vindictive , sentimental and self pitying. Cyn exudes confidence and calm, her father’s eys looking out at world from which he has departed. Cyn and her dad hate self pity, I turned it into an Olympic event.

Cyn was recently named VP of primary care at our hospital. She has done an amazing job reigning in and soothing the 4^th grade fragile yet preposterously self important egos of most docs. Had I been given the position, I would spend my time evening up the score, firing anyone who had offended me over the past 18 years. I'd soon be alone.

My self pity led me to believe there is nothing, save the suffering of one's child , than one’s own suffering. I have always felt the Deity singled me out for some karmic retribution, that is, until I tell someone of my fate and he or she replies with a tale so grotesque and horrible I am driven to ashamed silence. I am merely miserable; I am not among the horrible.

I feel that life is divided into the horrible and the miserable. That's the two categories. The horrible are like, I don't know, terminal cases, you know, and blind people, crippled. I don't know how they get through life. It's amazing to me. And the miserable is everyone else. So you should be thankful that you're miserable, because that's very lucky, to be miserable.”

---Woody Allen

But there is something worse than one’s own suffering. The suffering of one’s mate is far worse.

In suffering one has pity, one has carte blanche to be sad and bitter, to lash put against loved ones, to transgress in a million innocent and not so inniocent ways . There is perfect peace in being terminally ill, as I learned when my disease roared back and I was beyond chemotherapies’ ambivalent but sometimes helpful grasp. . I have known all of Kubler Ross’s stages of grief, even the last stange, acceptance ,which is not acceptance in the positive, life affirming style but the feeing the mouse feel’s as she is borne from earth in an eagle’s mouth.

Once upon a time I ached over my neoplastic fate, the pain of cancer therapy, of relapse, of endless side effects. Cyn was there every step of the way. Now I know the utter helplessness of watching one's loved ones suffer, knowing there is nothing, really, that can be done to assuage her pain.

Now its my turn to ache again, over the sufferings of my dearest.

Update: Just got back from the orthopedist. Mike is a jolly, reassuring guy, who reviewed Cyn's X rays and said " You' re doing great"

ptoo ptoo ptoo

Maybe life is retiuring to the daily disater of mere misery. I hope.

* A tad obscure. Sorry. George Bellows (1889-1925 American painer. Paineted Dempsy Vs Filpo ( 1924) Love the pic because Bellows is the bald guy to the left. I live my life for inside art jokes.