That’s life January 30, 2024
I had to catch up with all the stuff I’ve been putting off,
such as updating my ezpass (they are going to crack down on toll cheaters) as well as make
appointments with my various doctors.
It scares me that I have so many doctors I have to make appointments
with, including my primary who is holding my prescriptions hostage in order to
get me to come in and see him.
The blood doctor for my leukemia already had an appointment
scheduled, I just forgot what the date was. As terrifying as the word leukemia sounds,
I apparently have contracted a curable kind, four shots that make the whole
matter go away. Unfortunately, I have to show symptoms before he’ll treat it,
and some people do not show symptoms for decades – which at my age means I’ll
likely be dead of something incurable before I have to worry about this. Non the
less, he has me coming in for regular blood tests to gauge my progress.
My urologist is the biggest pain in the ass (figuratively
and literally) since he apparently retired last month, and now I have to start
over with one of his partners. While prostate was never cancerous, it was so
large at one point I couldn’t pee, and eventually had to undergo reduction
surgery – which went back and I spent five or six weeks walking around with a catheter
and a pee pouch, painful and degrading, a period of my life I equate with eternal
damnation.
Since I also had to go to surgery for a double hernia during
that same period, and all the associated tests related to the heart, I look
back on that without fond memories.
The year 2023 started off with the same dreadful fear since
I could hardly see due to a cataract and eventually had to go to surgery for
that as well – something I had actually put off the year earlier when all the
other surgeries loomed. Fortunately, this was the only condition I had to put
up with last year, although I will soon have to return for an exam – an appointment
I failed to make today, and will likely do so later in the week, as well as
making one with my dentist.
This is all the end of life stuff that Jung foretold, the
trauma of impending death, Freud largely ignored as he focused on our birth
issues.
We are like old cars in which God has installed planned obsolescence.
If we don’t perish from some disaster in youth or middle age (struck with
cancer or perhaps a Mack truck), then we have to endure the slow wear and tear
that comes with passing years, part of our anatomy ceasing to function or at
least as well as they should.
This destroys the illusion of immortality – at least until
medical science reaches the point Star Trek predicted, at which point, we might
have replaceable parts, if we can avoid getting blasted by some space aliens
ray gun.
Melonie died this week – a real blast from the past. Her
song “Beautiful People” summed up the naïve 1960s in very heart warming way, reflecting
the illusion of hope we all held out back then, and the assumption that if all
wore the same buttons and attended all the same protests, we might live out our
lives in bliss.
This is far different from other aspects of the 1960s, the
violence of the Chicago and Kent State protests, the nastiness of the Black Panthers
and the Weather Underground, which modern mean-spirited intolerant protestors
of today seem to emulate, people who blame conservatives for being mean.
The environmental crowd is worse. They all believe they are
saving the planet, when they are largely braindead. A pack of them threw soup
on one of the greatest pieces of fine art, somehow trying to make us believe
they are being righteous, when they are largely being stupid and mean.
But as George Harrison once pointed out, all things must
pass – good or bad. We lived through many such cycles. I would like to live
long enough to see these idiots put in their place, especially the pathetic
people protesting the war in the middle east. Four American soldiers died. Many
more innocent people were murdered, raped and kidnapped, but these protestors
expect us to have sympathy for the terrorists, much in the way Jane Fonda once gave
comfort to the enemy when she took her infamous trip to Hanoi, stirring up
another Beatles quote, that roughly goes, waving flags of Chairman Mao ain’t
gonna make it with anyone any how.
Maybe Frank Sinatra summed it up best when he sang, “That’s life”
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