Some of the stupidest advice ever. "Live everyday like it were your last." It sounds like the right idea if you have a terminal illness or even if you don't. Who doesn't want to live their life to the fullest? And it's great if you can pull it off. But what does that really mean? Life has a lot of waiting. At Starbucks, the ATM machine, whatever.
Does living like it's your last day mean we should no longer put up with those minor inconveniences -- We have only important stuff to do! -- Grab a wiffle-ball bat or a baguette and attack the old lady writing the check in my check-out line. She's stopping us from fully living our lives. Maybe we could try death-defying stunts. No biggie if we don't quite make it.
CANCER: Would you stop ranting, and get to work. You can skip the next part, as I am barely featured.
JONATHAN: I'm not skipping the next part. That's when this all started to become real and more scary. My doctor referred me to an oncologist, and the search for a medical team it seems had begun. This first doctor seemed knowledgeable, smart, down to earth, reassuring, and mostly notably human. I liked him immediately. The surgeon, on the other hand, scared the crap out of me. Nicest guy in the world, but then he starts drawing these diagrams of the procedure I would most likely undertake. In stark blue pen on a yellow legal pad, he showed how my esophagus would be removed and my stomach pulled up to connect to my neck. Granted that was the extreme case, but I still couldn't get that image out of my head for days.
The image of you, a baguette, and an old lady in a check-out line made me laugh.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you're writing these.