My medical saga? (you asked) : This fall I had surgery for a small breast cancer. Then, after we’d booked plane tickets, Airbnb reservations for Tucson, and a pet sitter, I started having so much discomfort in my pelvic area that it was determined I needed major corrective surgery. Forgive me for being vague. Suffice to say, eight years ago, as part of my cancer treatment, I had five weeks of radiation in that area plus three treatments involving rods of radiation placed inside me. The tissues, the organs, weakened by all this, can collapse more readily. Healing sometimes has it costs. Plus, you know, age. Plus, having children.
So here we are, in the middle of another northern winter, 14 degrees and snowing. Tomorrow, 14 degrees and snowing. Etc. Quite lovely from our third floor windows, or if you’re out skiing and snowshoeing. Not so much if you were planning to be in warmth and sunshine. Oh well, you know, life is life, no matter where you are. Always interesting.
I’m on the last few days of the high-powered, addictive Tramadol. I take one, and shortly, a veil of ease falls over me. When I switch back to Tylenol, which I am slowly transitioning to, there is a sharpness to life, an intensity to the discomfort.
I can see the lure. What’s the downside, if you’re miserable, in deep emotional pain, maybe. If you’ve lost your job, can’t think how to support your child, if the country is going to hell. If etcetera. Why not slip into that ease? Of course you don’t anticipate what will happen when the ease becomes desperate need. You’re not in any shape to think ahead.
So I’m thinking what it means to endure pain. We use the word enduring, as in sticking it out. As in tightening all the muscles waiting for the pain to go away. But we’re made of nerve endings. To be alive is to be aware of a thousand, thousand bodily pricks, including the bodily reaction of the mind itself, in search of remedy, of the reasons it’s suffering. Maybe if we find the right reason, we can fix it.
Sometimes we can fix it. We can get a tooth filled, a surgery done. Chemo, radiation. But if you’ve lived through any of those fixes, you become acutely aware that the base level of your pleasure in life isn’t as dependent on the fix as you might have thought. I’m enjoying my morning coffee. And I’m enjoying writing this to you, for no reason at all except that I seem to want to do it. I’m enjoying recently having written a long poem I’m happy with.
How a big ship stays stable in the ocean.
Recounting these events is not by way of balance—as in, on the one hand, there’s pain, on the other there’s this. Imagine a ship stabilized by fins under the surface to reduce the roll. If one thing goes wrong, there’s always the good thing you can cite to balance it. An even keel.
To imagine an even keel is to imagine a flatline of a life. Nobody wants trouble, nobody wants pain, but here they are, inevitably. To be alive is to feel.
Tramadol works by changing the way your brain senses pain. It acts like endorphins. Endorphins decrease the pain messages to the brain. It also increases serotonin in the brain. It makes you feel happier. If you take Tramadol too long, I read, it affects your memory and all cognitive functions. It can make you hostile, anxious, depressed. It’s good to learn these things. It’s good to modify some of the pleasure of pain’s alleviation with the hard-rock facts of what that alleviation can do to you. Drugs are temporary antidotes, like when you come indoors out of the snow and warm your hands at the fire. You don’t want to stay there. You want to get back out in the cold on your skis. (Comparison only works if you like to ski.)
From Maria Popova, whose blog, “Marginalia,” I read most Sundays: “ To be an artist in the largest sense is to be fully awake to the totality of life as we encounter it, porous to it and absorbent of it, moved by it and moved to translate those inner quickenings into what we make.”
P.S. What else am I up to? I’m judging a Poetry Out Loud contest today for a Technical High School class. I’ve done this many times before, even back in Delaware. You’d be amazed at how good the students are, and how passionate about their presentation. I’m always interested in which poems they pick from the packet.
Then on Saturday I’m teaching a 4-hour virtual poetry workshop for Interlochen Arts Academy. It’s a full class now, focusing on a particular aspect of craft.