Thought That Came Unbidden

What would you do if you knew you only had 6 weeks to live? Six months? A year?

Now, what would you do if you knew you only had 59 years to live?

I suspect that the answer to those first three questions is a little different than answer to that last question. Our entire society, all its rules and social norms, is predicated on the idea that each of us will have a lifespan of about 80 years. But what if you knew going in that you’d only get a set number of years? Would it change how you approached life?

Would you be more honest?

Would you take more risks?

Would you laugh more and enjoy the time you had?

Or would you freeze up, afraid to make even the slightest wrong move and waste what little precious time you have?

Either my uncle is the smartest person who ever lived or he figured out early that there are no guarantees. The stroke that we thought he had at the end of September has turned out to be neither a stroke nor an aneurysm, and apparently the doctors at the first hospital didn’t have a clue what they were doing.

Actual size (3.3cm) Imagine having something this big in your brain.

There was no stroke. There was no aneurysm. No, there was a tumor. A fucking huge one – nearly 33mm across – a smaller one (7mm across), and four even smaller lesions. Glioblastoma multiforme, a stage IV tumor, malignant, the most aggressive kind. If they can clear up the secondary infections he has and get him off antibiotics there is a possibility of radiation treatment. It might give him a few months, maybe as much as two years. Or, he could go to sleep between now and then and just not wake up, which given how miserable he’s been for the past few weeks might not just be the most merciful of the options.

They say these things are more common in men between 50 and 60 than they are in women, by a rate of 3 to 2, and that they don’t tend to run in families. Yet, my grandmother died of a brain tumor, origin unspecified as based on size, location, and her age they couldn’t get a look at actual tissue without turning her into a vegetable.

Want to take a guess at my chances?

I’m learning too late that playing by the rules, that doing what I’ve been told I should do and deferring what I want for a later that may never come is probably not the best way to live. Living the life of an ant clearly isn’t working, but living like a grasshopper isn’t a good bet either (after all, my grandmother was 79 when she died).

I’m not sure there’s anything I can do about the way I live my life now (I’m too old, too scared, and too without resources), and even if there was, I’m not sure I’d even begin to know how to change.

There’s just nothing about this that doesn’t suck.

I’m ambivalent about World AIDS Day.

According to the UN, in 2005 4.9 million people acquired HIV, which means there are now over 40 million people living with HIV and AIDS. Of that 40 million people over 2 million are children under the age of fifteen, and more than half – nearly 26 million – live in Sub-Saharan Africa where education, prevention, and medication are often rare or so expensive as to be out of reach of the majority of people.

HIV/AIDS disproportionately affects the poor (no, I can’t prove this but it is axiomatic: being poor means less access to education and healthcare which means a greater risk for preventable disease). And yet, it seems to me that all the AIDS epidemic has spawned is a lot of charities that grow fat off donations and seemingly do nothing (has AMFAR actually come up with a cure yet?) and a generation of gay men who take for granted the protease inhibitors and other drugs that no longer make AIDS an automatic death sentence.

Perhaps I’m just bitter because AIDS robbed me of a chance to be truly young and carefree. There’s nothing like being 17 and ready to leave home and get a taste of freedom only to be told that not only is sex a sin (OK, they didn’t tell me that at school officially) that can leave you with a life-long responsibility but it can now, literally, kill you. Oh, and by the way, we’re not *really* sure how you get the virus so better to just drop any thoughts you had of exploring your sexuality. And beware of night sweats. That’s a good girl.

I’m ambivalent about World AIDS Day because I don’t think HIV can be cured. I don’t think we’re smart enough to find a medical cure (after all, HIV is the king of parasitic viruses; once resident in the host it can replicate and live a nice long life equivalent to millenia in viral time before killing the host off) or self disciplined enough (the easiest way to stop AIDS, it seems to me, would be for no one else to ever get it again; or perhaps I’m missing something) to win through attrition. HIV, I think, is nature’s way of finally getting us off the planet.

Cynical…perhaps. But when you think about it people are a sort of cancer in the biosphere: we run amok, have no natural predators, and destroy everything we see.

So…today, remember your friends who have passed, if you have any; I know I will. It’s the least we can do for them and it certainly does no harm.

When I wasn’t working on the novel in November I was either 1) asleep, 2) at work, or 3) baking. Since me being asleep is both dull, although there was that dream I had about the Asian guy in the “Where’s Waldo?” sweater, and a rarity, and since my current job woes are really too horrible to dwell on, I thought I’d share a bit of the baking.

This recipe started life as Parmesean Herb Muffins (the herbs being parsley and sage) but it makes a nice base for a cheese bread of any sort.

[Read more…] about Cheesy bread

From iTunes blurb about the single of the week “Rock & Roll Queen” by The Subways: If you’re a fan of coolly disaffected pop with stylish punk energy, then you’ll understand why “Rock & Roll Queen” is our Free Single of the Week

This will be important later. Trust me. I know what I’m doing.

Oh, and I think I fixed my character motivation problem, which fixes most of the plot problems.

I’m not gloating, though. Don’t want to be smited (or would that be smitten? smoted?) or anything.

They killed off a character last night just like they promised they would. Unlike some fans, I’m fine with that. And they killed this character off in a way that made a certain amount of dramatic sense, and will add some tension to our lately to shiny, happy island community. But now we’re going to go back to “a whole new beginning” to learn what happened to the passengers in the tail section of the plane?

WTF?

I am even more convinced by this flashback maneuver that the writers and producers have written themselves into a corner and they don’t have any fucking clue where to go from getting the damn hatch open. When in doubt, go back to something you know, and since they seem to do disoriented strandees really well (hello, season 1), well, I guess we get more of that.

For this I gave up an hour of working on my book? I’ll have to seriously reconsider what I do next week.