Rare Afflictions

Until yesterday, I hadn't been able to focus on a screen for more than about five minutes. It took me hours to pick out an email or two around Christmas, and I've sent maybe a couple dozen messages since then. And as much as I've missed keeping up with you beautiful people, scrolling through Facebook made me a little queasy (the motion, not the content). Thank heavens for Krisha, who read me posts and jokes and comments every day for six weeks.

Today, however, I need to add to the narrative that Krisha has posted. She has discussed in part many unusual circumstances and complications that we've experienced over the last few months. But she hasn't written about the rare afflictions that consume my thoughts and weigh on my soul.

(This will be a quick single pass, because I'm only seven lines in and already my tummy wants ginger ale and my eyes are a bit swimmy, even with new reading glasses, so forgive the typos and melodrama and roughness that should probably get edited.)

I’ve been afflicted since my diagnosis in June with an ineffable calm and confidence that everything will be fine. I didn't ask for this feeling, and I've wondered many days why it was thrust on me, whether it was real, and when it would pass. Other people with cancer and serious illness don't get this—why should I? For six months, it never let up, growing finally into a distinct and profound sense of peace that undergoing this treatment was the right thing to do.

Krisha didn't have it until that day shortly before we left for North Carolina when we decided to spend some time meditating in our church's temple. Since the surgery I've had many days when the feeling abated and, normal at last, I wondered whether I'd ever feel well. But there was Krisha, now afflicted, reinfecting me every minute of every day and reminding me that all was indeed well.

Before the appendectomy that launched this circus, I was afflicted for many years more than most people with health and safety. No scooter accidents, no falls while rappelling, no chronic or devastating illness, no burdens of pregnancy, no major surgeries, no combat, hunger, poverty or serious threats to my physical well-being. For years, I've been deprived even of the exultant relief that follows a good vomit or the sense of invincibility brought on by the passing of a nasty cold or the pride inspired by the return of regular poops and pees after a period of interruption. And now, despite a couple rough months and some still-to-be-answered questions, I have a pretty good prognosis for many more years of solid health. What do I do with all that?

Every day for weeks now I’ve been plagued by kindness and generosity and miraculous interventions of strangers and kin who have made things easy, comfortable, bearable in tough moments, hopeful on dark days.

How many of you have ever been serenaded—just for you—with Christmas carols by dozens of young children and gotten a hundred hugs to send you on your way? How many of you have ever papered a wall with hand-drawn cards from those children and read their love and wishes dozens of times a day? (And enjoyed some crazy hallucinations when those drawings mixed with your pain meds?) Rare indeed.

How many of you in Los Angeles have had people offer—OFFER, with a smile!—to take you to LAX at 5:00 a.m. and pick you up at rush hour? Rarer still.

And then to be greeted by old friends and new strangers in an unfamiliar town, who joined with family to smother me daily with attention and care.

A mother who threatens the nurses that she'll go all Shirley-MacLaine-in-Terms-of-Endearment on them if they don't fix stuff—and gets a laugh and the attention needed. And a mother-in-law backing up the mother! Fearsome rare.

A brother who spent the best week of the holiday season fussing over my needs in the hospital and making my move to a recovery house possible, and even enjoyable.

Another brother and niece and nephew who drove five hours each way during those festive days to crowd my hospital room for forty-eight hours with cheer and drawings and hugs.

Siblings on both sides of the family who, it seems, have had nothing better to do than overwhelm me by calling, mailing cards and presents, writing messages, making arrangements, sending money, handling needs, spreading cheer and making mix CDs that I'm now addicted to. Too much to bear.

Friends who drive hours out their way to look in on my bloated, cranky, nauseated carcass, even for a few minutes, leaving me with an undeserved sense of love and connection to a big world of concern.

A relative stranger who shares my disease and my cure and offers her food, car, daily attention to my and my wife's every need, and constant assurance that, yes, I will one day feel better again.

On top of all that, I’ve been unable to avoid the constant barrage of meals, messages, calls, visits, gifts, encouragement, treats and the best mojo the universe can offer—prayers, meditations, fasting and who knows what other incantations and oblations from Mormons, Catholics, Baptists, Jews, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, New Agers, agnostics, atheists and various other persuasions on every continent.

And then last night I lost precious sleep, just couldn't get to bed, because I got sucked into hundreds of messages sent to me over the last weeks. I'm sure Krisha read them to me at some point, but, honestly, the two weeks after the surgery are pretty blurry. So I'm reading them all now, unable to stop and go to bed—and I’m still far from 100%, dammit—so the plague grows.

Finally, the intense affliction I haven't been able to shake for even a second, day or night, for all these months: my wife. I can't even sneak out for a 4 a.m. pee without hearing "What can I do for you?" whispered from under the cocoon of blankets on the other side of the bed. At my side in the hospital, at every appointment and treatment, chewing out surgeons and nurses, feeding, cleaning, wheelchairing, note-taking, massaging, driving, worrying, investigating, encouraging, blessing, kidnapping me and making me walk on the beach, letting me be a big baby for two months, removing any reason to my whines, her loving eyes and lips smiling the whole time, just to rub it in good. Why do I deserve all that?

I'm at a complete loss for how to escape these afflictions that have both saved my life and burdened me with an eternal, unpayable debt of gratitude and responsibility. I’ll stack up my plagues against anyone else’s, and it will be obvious that I am the one who has been most rarely afflicted.

To all of you who have afflicted me, just remember that what goes around comes around. God bless you all.