Boy in a Box
I'm 23, I am not a kid anymore. But you don't feel like an adult when you're trapped like this.
When you're a kid you don't wander too far, you behave yourself, you use your indoor voice. You don't make decisions.
You can't. You do what you're told to, because people who know better, know better than you.
But I'm 23 and I can't make decisions because I have cancer. There's none left for me to make. My decision making privileges have been temporarily revoked. Everything is all worked out for me. My parents are still in the picture, but now doctors have entered the frame. They are part of my extended family. Helping me. Curing me. Making sure I don't wander too far.
On September 11th I will begin my treatment, which involves 6 weeks of chemotherapy. 6 weeks, where I will essentially be removed from normal existence. Stuck in my apartment, with books, and videos, and this computer. I will be bald. I will be prone to disease. I may be sick, or weak, or tired. Piece of cake. But first I have to make it there. And when I make it there, then I just have to make it 6 weeks. I'll get through this, and then everything goes back to normal, says conventional wisdom.
But that's a long period of time to give up. Even for testicular cancer.
Surgeons removed my right testicle earlier this month.
When general anesthesia is administered it numbs the brain, so not only do you not feel a thing, you're not even there. For the first time in your life you experience sleep without dreams. Well, you don't experience it. What you experience is the pinch of the needle as pain killers are pumped into your system, followed by waking up in a hospital bed, feeling groggy and noticing a bandage around your groin. My point is, time does not pass, it simply isn't there at all. You jump from one point of time to another without touching anything in between.
I wonder what that would feel like over a longer period of time.
I wonder, if I had the option to pass up the next 2 months - skip the whole thing - and come out cured on the other end, would I do it?
I think I can say I'd at least like the option.
When you're a kid you don't wander too far, you behave yourself, you use your indoor voice. You don't make decisions.
You can't. You do what you're told to, because people who know better, know better than you.
But I'm 23 and I can't make decisions because I have cancer. There's none left for me to make. My decision making privileges have been temporarily revoked. Everything is all worked out for me. My parents are still in the picture, but now doctors have entered the frame. They are part of my extended family. Helping me. Curing me. Making sure I don't wander too far.
On September 11th I will begin my treatment, which involves 6 weeks of chemotherapy. 6 weeks, where I will essentially be removed from normal existence. Stuck in my apartment, with books, and videos, and this computer. I will be bald. I will be prone to disease. I may be sick, or weak, or tired. Piece of cake. But first I have to make it there. And when I make it there, then I just have to make it 6 weeks. I'll get through this, and then everything goes back to normal, says conventional wisdom.
But that's a long period of time to give up. Even for testicular cancer.
Surgeons removed my right testicle earlier this month.
When general anesthesia is administered it numbs the brain, so not only do you not feel a thing, you're not even there. For the first time in your life you experience sleep without dreams. Well, you don't experience it. What you experience is the pinch of the needle as pain killers are pumped into your system, followed by waking up in a hospital bed, feeling groggy and noticing a bandage around your groin. My point is, time does not pass, it simply isn't there at all. You jump from one point of time to another without touching anything in between.
I wonder what that would feel like over a longer period of time.
I wonder, if I had the option to pass up the next 2 months - skip the whole thing - and come out cured on the other end, would I do it?
I think I can say I'd at least like the option.
posted by sleepwithoutdreams at 9:36 PM
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