This is the article I wrote for this day in 2010. An interesting look back.
Malaise
I’ve been losing energy for the past few days. There’s a little dark cloud over my head that I just can’t seem to burn off. I’m living in a perpetual Groundhog Day where I keep repeating the same day over and over again. First of all, it’s not that great a day and second, the prospect of continuing to live it again and again is depressing me.
The VA doctors have pretty much thrown their hands up in surrender; their bag of tricks is empty. Radiation is on the horizon, but solely for pain control. It’s a win-lose situation because in order to stop the chronic pain in the worst areas, they have to kill all of the cells because our technology isn’t up to selective cell irradiation. Killing off bone cells means killing the marrow, and that means I have even less immunity to issues. The atrophy and deterioration of my body will speed up as blood activity wanes.
I realized the other day that it winded me simply going to the bathroom, and pain makes it harder for me to stand or walk for any length of time. Because of this, my musculature is shrinking and the mass of my bones is shrinking right along with it. Like becalmed mariners, fighting scurvy and lolling abut the decks with nothing to do invariably waste away, the same thing is happening to me. It’s a downward spiral.
It’s difficult to talk about this and not sound whining and woos-like. But this is a part of having Multiple Myeloma, the point to this blog.
While pneumonia or other infection is often the last straw for Myeloma patients, depression is a vicious facilitator on the sidelines; a parasite feasting voraciously on hope and confidence. It makes me seek more of the isolation visited on me by cancer. Like a mushroom, I thrive on segregation from the world, existing in a quiet darkness while awaiting the concluding harvest. It’s difficult be tenacious about life when living is little more than trying to find ways to pass time. I’m alone for abut 22 of 24 hours each day. That’s a lot of time to fill.
I have my robots and my Kindle, together with my television and computer they define my plane of reality. There is little to look forward to and much to be apprehensive about, so trying to think in terms of the future can be excruciating at times. One can’t help but include further physical deterioration in time passage thinking. Thinking of the future is like sitting down to eat cheesecake –right after you sprinkle it with shards of broken glass.
I could probably reach out and get more people involved with me. Perhaps that would help the bouyancy of my thoughts. But something makes me reticent to do that; I don’t want to feel like I’m inflicting myself on others. If they have the time and inclination, they will make it known. There’s more to it than just worrying whether I’m inconvenient for others but it is difficult to describe. Suffice to say that I probably could be less isolated if I did something, but I just don’t feel like doing it.
I have been giving thought to moving to a new city. A weird idea, perhaps. But maybe a new place that has things I want to see would help me avoid the self-reinforcing funk I keep falling into. Being depressed isn’t a new experience; I’ve been pretty depressed since they told me I was dying from this crap and there was little to be done. I think I know what it feels like to be in prison and on death row. Except they have bigger rooms and people to talk to and spend time with.
But no matter where I go, I will need some kind of help because of my disabilities, and I end up back thinking again that I don’t want to inflict myself on others. Plus that, I keep being told how I’m not viable, so I don’t even know if I can make it through the set up of living in a new place, what with the deposits and credit checks that go along with relocating. Of course, I’m not rich and so the expense of moving is a bit daunting as well.
That’s depression for you. No matter which way you look, its a dark and gray-lighted place that offers foreboding more than welcome. While depression may give a bleakness to forward vision, but it’s merely the frosting on a cake of reality.
* * * * * * *
It seems like so very long ago that I wrote this. Some of the feelings in it have changed, but some remain or remain in part. A demonstration that things do move on –and perhaps it’s even inspirational, considering the way things have turned out. All of the things that concerned me have worked their way out, some for the good and some less than that. But I see things a lot more brightly today than I did three years ago.
