Last week I ran into my car insurance guy at the grocery store. "What's new?" he asked, and I didn't know how to answer. This is one of the awkward side effects of my current condition: there's just no easy answer to simple questions like "How are you?"
"I'm okay," I say, "And you?"
But "okay" doesn't really cover the situation. I have cancer! Cancer is not okay! My own cells are trying to kill me! The treatments make me sick! And I have side effects that can't really be discussed in polite society!
But that's not the kind of thing I can say in a casual conversation at the grocery store, so "okay" it is.
Sometimes, though, "okay" won't do, so I offer more details--which is like inviting the Grim Reaper into the room. No one wants the Grim Reaper at the party. He's a lousy conversationalist, for one thing, and if he keeps swinging that sickle around, he's bound to hurt someone.
So we eventually circle back to "I'm okay." Which is true enough, as far as it goes. I'm okay, considering. Okay, under the circumstances. Okay, provided that you stretch the definition of "okay" past the breaking point.
Last week when I was in the hospital to get my port installed, the anesthesiologist was reviewing my medical history and reading aloud snippets of information he found in my file: "Patient ambulatory....liver, spleen, and kidneys unremarkable....uterus surgically absent" (to which I wanted to reply: it had better be absent or someone's getting sued).
Maybe I'll adopt some of that medical language in everyday conversation:
"How are you?"
"Ambulatory. And you?"
"Great! How was your summer?"
"Well, parts of it were pretty unremarkable."
Blank look.
"The liver, spleen, and kidneys, to be precise."
Slowly backing away.
"But hey, I'm okay!"
The sound you've just heard is the door shutting as the Grim Reaper leaves the room.
2 comments:
Sometimes, I just smile and say I'm vertical.
I wish everybody either DID believe in God, or didn't believe in God, because half the whole awkwardness involved in talking about tragic and senseless situations is the fear that the way you express your sympathy and hope for someone's recovery is, in and of itself, going to set off a whole unwanted tangle of negative political associations and make their situation, by a tiny bit, needlessly more unpleasant.
But anyway. I hope very much that you remain ambulatory, and that each organ of you becomes progressively more unremarkable, and that the rebellious cells become progressively more absent, until there's nothing more for the doctor to say but "I think we're going to be ok!" - and mean it.
And if I may have invited certain unseen powers or entities in on that wish as well, I'll shut my yap about all THAT.
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