carpe diem

A movie title from the 50’s came to mind this morning: The Beginning of the End.  Starring Peter Graves, it was a typical “B” horror flick about giant grasshoppers taking over the world.  Not the premise of this movie, it was the title itself that caught my eye.

I start chemotherapy tomorrow, I’ve known this for several weeks.  I’ve known that I have cancer for a little longer.  So today I asked myself “Is this the beginning of the end” for me?  Realistically, that “Big C” timer is ticking.  One year, three years, five years?  No one knows.

The only time I can recall feeling this way was when I found out that I was destined for Viet Nam courtesy of the Navy in 1971.  It wasn’t so much of a fatalistic feeling as it was a feeling of mortality.  I was 21 at the time. I returned unharmed.  Funny, even when I had a major heart attack at 36, I wasn’t really worried.  I was more pissed off at myself during that long ambulance ride to the hospital.  I was in a lot of pain and I wasn’t worried, I was angry at myself for letting this thing happen.  That’s pretty much how I felt in 1998 when I went in for bi-pass surgery – I was a bit perturbed at how I could have let myself get to this point.  But I didn’t have these overwhelming feelings of mortality.

Of course since then I’ve reconciled the fact that there may not have been anything I could have done one way or the other to avoid those medical situations.  There is no reason to place blame or rationalize how I got here now either.  It’s just the way it is.

Well, the realistic Beginning of the End for all of us is birth.  From the moment we are born things go downhill.  The aging process is inevitable and it is cruel…and it is unavoidable.  With that realization, this beginning of the end nonsense has already been taken off my plate and replaced by another saying.  This morning, I heard the Latin term carpe diem mentioned in a news interview.

Carpe diem?  I’ve heard it before but never knew what it meant until I Googled it this morning.  And when I read the painfully simply definition, it all made sense.  Carpe diem – “seize the day” is the literal translation, “to enjoy, seize, use, make use of”.  Carpe literally means “to pick, pluck, pluck off, cull, crop, gather”.  And I truly seem to have a renewed want to pick, pluck, cull, crop, and gather!  Without seeming too flippant or, heaven forbid, too irresponsible…let’s get this party started!

The other foreign language saying I’ve tried to live by of late is the French cook school ditty mise en place –  “everything in place”.  And right now, I think I have everything in place, more than any other time in my life.  I am doing exactly what I should be doing right now, and that is taking care of this cancer.

Tomorrow at 1:00 pm I have an appointment in the infusion lab at Kaiser.  Specifically, Chair #1 is reserved for yours truly.  It’ll take a couple of hours then I will be sent home with a portable pump attached to my chest port for two days.  Then back Wednesday to have the pump disconnected, and returning every other Monday for six months.  Mise en place…everything in its place.  And the days I’m feeling well enough from the effects of chemo…carpe diem…seize the day.