I didn’t meet my father until I was 15. He didn’t know I existed until then. My parents were never married, well they were just not to each other. I’ve always been a bastard. I had assumed my brother’s father, my mother’s first husband was and somehow never mentioned it to anyone, just wondered why he was polite and no more to me while being much kinder to my brother his son. So when I found out the truth, that shifted a lot of things about self perception about who I was from well conception on.
Today’s events had similar…feelings. I didn’t officially get my MRI results from over a month ago till today. I had gotten a print out of the report the day after from a second opinion so I wasn’t worried about it, a formality in my book this time around. In the conversation with my neurooncologist in over a year, there was a lot to catch up on and like the good man he is he asked questions and listened. Now that I’m back in the workforce, always being a workaholic I have done my appointments to disrupt that as little as possible. The MRI had been at 10:00. This appointment was his closing one of the day.
Still, the conversation we had, had a very confusing element. The median survival rate for my cancer is 4 years without surgery, 7 years with. Long time readers of this train wreck of thought may remember that at 7 years he said well maybe IF and when we get to 10 years we’ll move MRI’s to annually instead of every 6 months. The kind born on 8/8/80 talked him into doing it at 8 years. When I got to 10, the survival rate is 12% and he said after giving me the good news that everything was stable and congratulating me the reality check in of that he’d had a lot of his patients see growth between 10 and 12 years. Last year at almost 11 he said “well you know if we get to 15 I may start to believe you’ll be one of the lucky ones.” There may be people who take that as harsh but I genuinely appreciated. It’s why I’ve kept him as my longest doctor. My neurosurgeon I picked because he said we’re probably not going to beat this but maybe we’ll get you to 40. I like reality checks, I like reality (I like checks too if anyone wants to send them).
I’ve long stated that what I bet on and what I hope for don’t always match after all I’m a Dallas Cowboys fan. It gets some laughs but then I realized what I bet on and what I hope for rarely match. If it’s ‘just a hope’ I next to never put money on it. The only games I’ve ever bet on in a casino in any significant fashion are Blackjack and Poker, ones that because the mathematical parts of my brain still work, I can figure out odds. The house, like the Grim Reaper, may always win but you have some probability to guesstimate. So I have been betting on the probability that I would be dead by 40… that passed but still I just figured, it was at best Russian roulette with a bigger barrel than I had realized (those damn abusive Russians).
And I don’t really know what to do if my oncologist is right. Of course that may not be true, he was never stating I would die but the probability didn’t apply here, has not so far anyway. But what is he is? I’ve made the vast majority of big decisions based on not living too long, heck on not being alive now. This can easily be deduced to the best and worst decisions of my life.
Financially, I assumed the big medical bills may come again and have lived more fiscally to not leave my child with less at my passing (remember she was 3 when this started). Ironically, it’s led to me putting money into retirement accounts, betting I’d never retire but because in the event of medical bankruptcy they can’t go after that so it was protected for Kiana.
I didn’t do dental care as much as I should have cause you know I didn’t need them for decades just a decade and that has cost me a fair chunk of change.
I’ve kept driving the same 2008 cause why would I not just run it into the ground. It’s holding but it is the longest I’ve ever owned a car even if 3 years it was sitting in a garage due to seizures.
Almost all my decisions about relationships with women have been based on that probability… I’ll let the long time readers guess on whether I think those were among the best or worst decisions of my life.
But one I made was that I decided, made it impossible for myself to have any more kids because I thought it would be irresponsible to leave a kid with a low probability for a father. I never wanted Kiana to be an only child. How bad was that decision as a risk assessment?
I stayed out of the proper workforce being forced out until some changes forced me back into it thinking that I wanted to enjoy life. I’ve returned realizing I’m still a workaholic but even as I was trying to return I only applied in the non profit world figuring I had at best 5 years to give and feeling like the equity in my house, the 529, and the retirement were enough at this point to get Kiana to college and proper adulthood since I wasn’t going to be around anyway. Would I have worked harder to get into the for profit world with this idea?
At usual appointments, I ask can I keep running and am I fit to raise a kid because one is how I get through the day and the other day is why. My running is horrible right now for a huge variety of reasons, some of them strictly medical. And while there may be people who think I’m a decent dad, I know exactly how inadequate I have been in Kiana’s adolescence so even my typical questions of how and why are off.
As I headed out of the oncologist office, I saw him headed out the back into his car as I sat reflecting in my car. I drove out then and somewhere in the Austin traffic, I started bawling, not my rare crying which is a tear or few down my cheeks but just where you’re trying to hold it in but to do so makes you feel like you’re being choked. The last time I cried like that after a medical appointment was years ago on a plane on the way home from Duke after the major stuff there had been settled.
So 27 years ago, I was confused about what life had meant since birth. Today I am confused about how to live without as harsh of a view of a impending death. The questions swimming through my head are legion.
A church lady once sent me a song about how living like you’re dying isn’t living at all. I thought it was silly at the time and told her so since we’re all dying but today it perhaps is making more sense. Maybe I was dying like I was living if that has any rhyme or reason to it.
I am confused and dazed and probably not as thrilled as most people believe I should be. I’ll give it a few more hours at most about looking back and then I’ll look forward and try to dream, live, be bigger than death just around the corner while still loving life. I’m not hoping for that, for the first time in over a decade, I’m betting on it.
