It’s 7/30, penultimate July, tigers about to exit; this is a lightly edited version of e-mail under header turning point, sent this morning to family and caregivers.
I’ve been telling you that recently I’ve felt (and appeared to be) in as good shape, physically and medically, as I’ve been in years. Implied in that statement is that it will come to an end.
We are now in the end times: I still feel great, and look great, and perform well at all the things I can still do, but my kidneys are in dire trouble — repeated testing tells me so — and my nephrologist (Luis Alvarez) has called in the big guns: large doses of prednisone, which are known to work well for me, except that there’s some threshold at which they make me very seriously crazy (not a clinical description, but it gives you the right flavor). The point is that there’s a good chance of arresting the damage and actually improving the situation.
The longer-range trajectory is of course down; no one lives forever. I am, fortunately, an old hand at living every day as if it’s my last. But I need to carve out time to do my writing; I still have serious plans, though the best I’m currently able to do is brief entertaining postings, just holding my position in line, as it were. (See yesterday’s shark cartoon.)
My body and mind are both registering great anxiety and panic. My resting pulse has been racing like crazy since I saw Dr. Alvarez yesterday (he and his excellent PA insisted that 92 bpm was entirely normal, despite the fact that 70 was my highest reading for months — mostly it’s been 60 and under). My blood pressure is also at great highs for me, though not at the go-to-the-Emergency-Room level. Subjectively, however, I continue to feel wonderful, am doing amazing amounts of household work (well, I’m the only person to do it), and continue to have a deeply satisfying high sex drive (normally a key indicator of my health).
(People, please do not tell me that I shouldn’t be anxious, it will be ok. This is just insulting; it says that my anxiety is one more thing I have failed to do right; I am, you will say, TOO SENSITIVE, a silly girl, a drama queen, whatever. Instead, just be sympathetic and supportive; please don’t review my character.)
In any case, as far as my conscious experience of body and mind is concerned, I feel wonderful, so I’m going with that as much as possible. My hands are in constant, disabling pain, which I have to work around. But I’m not curled up in the fetal position hoping to die, or weeping and sobbing “Why me?” (though I have done all of that on occasions in the past). Instead, I’m energized and full of ideas. Apparently, I’m in crisis subliminally, but I prefer this other state of consciousness, so I’m sticking with it, and I know how to mess with my mind to do that (most of the time). Please help me with this project.
[I need to do a posting on the idea that my having survived a whole panorama of dreadful afflictions and managed, again and again over almost 86 years, not to die, shows that I am especially resilient. This is a fabulous review of my character — the image is of great nobility in battle — but it too is bullshit. I did not survive measles bronchitis as a child and bleeding almost to death from a hole in my intestines as an adult (I can go on with this litany for quite a long time) because I was tough. It was all luck, plus (crucially) the rapid availability of very high-quality medical care.
I have hospitals and doctors and other medical staff all around the world to thank for for my survival. My pluck, admirable though it might be, has no role in this at all.
Where my admirable pluck is important is in aiding, even driving, recuperation. I have a genuine talent for recuperating from dreadful near-fatal afflictions. Some kind of systematic optimism. Which I have once again called upon today, the first day of the rest of my life. Odd to say this, but I had a pleasant, sort of ramshackle day today (topped off with cream cheese wrapped in smoked salmon — I am unfortunately bagelless — as a dinnertime reward), after a surprising night of satisfying sleep for, omigod, 12 hours. Apparently I’m working unconsciously on getting better; it takes time.]
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