Warning: Health problem blog entry
Yesterday I had a revelation about, of all things, Kafka’s Metamorphosis, which I hadn’t read since I was about 15, but that I am rereading again. I enjoyed it then (all that teenage angst and alienation really helped) but I didn’t really realize what it was about. The last four months for me have been really hard, especially with my husband having to do so much for me, like drive me to my many dr appts because I couldn’t drive for two months or having to do all my trips up and down the stairs for me after the surgery. I spent four hours yesterday at the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance Center (no, I have no cancer, but that’s where my specialists work) which is a giant facility with a gorgeous view of Puget Sound, where there are no one but very sick people from several surrounding states, Alaska, Oregon, Washington, some from even further. Probably fifty people in the waiting room at all times. Many people there were in the last stages of cancer. All the nurses and doctors were upbeat and friendly, which, I can assure you, is a rarity among specialists. I had a team of doctors, including one who specialized in rare bleeding disorders and immune system problems. They spent three hours with me in examination, discussing my records, and determining tests and treatment. Lots of talk over test results that were “funny,” trying to connect childhood illnesses, antibiotics, infections, bruising, congenital defects, dental work. One doctor put in calls to every doctor and technician who had received the strange resutls, asked for the circumstances of the test, their opinions. I felt like a patient on that show “House” (very addictive medical drama) – my favorite part was when one of the doctors said “I bet her kidney is just covered in lesions!” in a really excited way, like that might be a desirable thing, LOL. Yes, that would be great. But it made me think about how strange, how different the life of a cancer patient, or any “sick” person, is. All the doctor’s offices, the dosages, not worrying about relationships or clothes or work but how you will get through the day without something dramatically terrible happening.
And I realized that Kafka was writing about his health problems – becoming a tuberculosis patient whom his parents and beloved sister had to take care of, instead of him taking care of them. Becoming a giant disgusting cockroach in the story was a way of him expressing how alone and different and just, well, gross he felt, how he felt no one in his family understood him, how he hated having to be fed and dressed and all that. Maybe this was obvious to others, but I had never thought to research Kafka’s biography and just assumed that my teacher had been right – the story was all about the alienation of the modern world. Which it is, but also the alienation of being sick. Kafka eventually died in one of those sanitariums for tuberculosis, from starvation because his throat hurt too much to ear or drink. In “Metamorphosis” Gregor gives up and dies. I wrote a poem recently in which I referred to myself as part monster, and one of my friends wrote to me after reading the poem, “Sorry you feel like a monster.” But I feel that I have to embrace the inner “monster.” I mean, these days there is really no excuse to give up, what with all the strategies and treatments and medicines and all. And I don’t have cancer – just a bunch of weird stuff that could kill me but might not. I was told I might have to start wearing a medical bracelet, which was alarming because I don’t think of myself as sick, someone who has to wear an emblem of sickness. But I think I talked them down to putting a card in my wallet. Now I have a card in my wallet. It’s weird, the doctors, especially the women doctors, get this weird look of sympathy and tell me how smart I am, how healthy I appear, how I’m so marvellously upbeat. That tells me they feel sorry for me. I volunteered in hospitals for years, and I felt sorry for the children I worked with, for the heart patients on several machines, for the cancer patients being strolled down hallways. It’s very strange to be the one other people feel sorry for. I’m too well for that, right?
Anyway, blah blah blah not taking life for granted these days, blah blah blah not writing but reading a lot, trying to make sense of things, of my body, of those mornings when I wake up feeling bitter and angry and just “not like everyone else.” Like Gregor wondering where all those weird brown secretions are coming from, why his body won’t obey him.
/health blog entry