The Long Haul

We met with the Doc today to go over results from last week's catscan. Nothing is bigger and nothing is smaller. No shrinkage and no growth. The doc says this is good news. For me, it is not the news I hoped for, but also not the news I feared.

Doc scheduled me to come back in six weeks, not the every other week as before. He wants another catscan in 12 weeks, not the eight weeks as prior. Apparently any changes in my cancer will be very slow, be they growth or shrinkage. Please, remember that with this type of cancer, metastasized papillary renal carcinoma, stopping the growth is very good news. This type grows slowly but is hard to treat. I am in for a long haul. Jacki is in for a long haul. All of you in my corner are in for a long haul.

So how do I live my life? What do I do with my days and months and years? I have a few role models, people who can no longer work but have rich and useful lives. We do recovery, and a bit more service. And, maybe we volunteer in other ways. Several of you have suggested I write a book - I go immediately to the best seller or not worth writing. Maybe not a good reason to totally reject the possibility. However, there are two causes peripheral to addiction, that touch my heart.

Many years ago I volunteered at a crisis nursery 4 hours per week. I did that for four months. I remember assembly line diaper changing. Playing lullabies on my harmonica hoping a room of 15 babies will sleep for awhile at night. And I remember the horrors of abuse that some of the infants came with to the nursery. Cigarette burns on tiny feet sticks in my head. I know that I felt useful and I had a pretty good touch with the babies.

Secondly, I feel drawn to somehow volunteer in a domestic violence prevention role. It is an issue personal to me in my own life. I grew up with a family tree rife with hitting and throwing and yelling at women and at children. My dad was not as bad as his dad, who was not as bad as his dad, on back to some beginning generation of family violence that no one can pinpoint. Three different times I slapped my first wife. 1978. I remember it like yesterday. I felt so small and ashamed. I vowed never to hit again, and I never have. However, what happened to that anger? What is a man to do with emotions he learned are not okay to feel? Hitting, throwing and yelling is what I learned to do with those feelings, and now, with that vow, hitting is no longer an option. What to do now?

I was not aware in 1978 of that dilemma. Looking back I can see a lot of stuffed emotions and more and more drug use to help keep them stuffed. Don't interpret that to mean I became an addict because of how I was treated as a boy. Rather, I was trapped with that dilemma - what to do instead of rage? None of the men in my family showed any answer to that question, and I remember not one single time of anyone anywhere in those days even have a discussion about such a subject. It has taken years of a tough and costly road, before and since getting clean, to begin to solve that dilemma in an effective and healthy way. I see many of my fellows in recovery, who suffer from that same kind of bottled up with no outlet emotions. I think I have helped some of them and maybe I can do more outside the rooms of recovery. I am interested.

Thank God for very slow growing bad stuff that also has some silver lining. Knowing a possible way that I will one day die, does not make me at all special. It is likely cancer will not cause my demise anyway. What really makes me special is that I am like you. Thanks.
Bill