Losing It

   When a friend is overly agitated or angry, we tend to scream out loud (in a joking manner), "Hey man, you're losing it."  But more often when you first hear the term "losing it" you might think of that occasional moment when you misplace your keys or a folder or a bill; less frequently do you consider the loss as being a body part or a true decline in mental capacity, at least not while you still feels that there is so much life ahead, regardless of your age.  Certainly there is the soldier hitting the mine or the odd accident that takes a few fingers or worse, a leg or an eye.  And judging by the number of "memory" centers and studies on Alzheimer's disease there is a substantial number of people encountering a slow or perhaps a rapid cognitive decline.  But I've found that as one grows older the term takes on a bit more of a serious tone.  Flexibility diminishes, as does muscle strength.  That 50-pound bag of salt I used to lift out of the boot of the car now takes both arms instead of the grunt and lift I used to do with a single arm as if that bag were little more than a heavy sack of groceries.  And getting up from a sitting position on the floor?  I can do it, but why take the chance of popping a knee or cramping a thigh?  As for sitting in that yoga position or sitting with legs folded under Japanese and martial arts style?  That's now a distant dream, one about as far gone as watching a baby casually pull its big toe near its mouth as if its leg were made of rubber.

   Amongst this backdrop came two articles whose authors spoke openly about their own respective losses.  Both pieces of writing took "balls," as it's said, but in one piece the author suffered horribly from testicular cancer and truly lost one of his "balls."  It appeared in the London Review of Books and exemplified the resistance men seem to have on admitting that something may be going wrong, especially "down there."  Here's how Colm Toibin began his piece: It all started with my balls.  I was in Southern California and my right ball was slightly sore.  At the beginning I thought the pain might be caused by the heavy keys in the right hand pocket of my trousers banging against my testicle as I walked along the street.  So I moved the keys into my jacket pocket.  The pain stayed for a while and then it went away and then it came back...Then I went to London and looked them up. It was clear what I had.  The right testicle was painful but not swollen.  But the veins around it had decided to swell up a bit.  The internet made clear what this condition was called: A hydrocele is a type of swelling in the scrotum that occurs when fluid collects in the thin sheath surrounding a testicle…Older boys and adult men can develop a hydrocele due to inflammation or injury within the scrotum.

   For the author, his condition proved as bad as he feared and he had to undergo chemotherapy and radiation, dropping from a size 36 waist to a size 30.  But the effects mentally were equally devastating: It was like pain or a sort of anguish, but those words don’t really cover it.  Everything that normally kept the day going, and the mind, was reduced to almost zero.  I couldn’t think.  All I could do sometimes was concentrate on getting through the next five minutes because contemplating any longer stretch of time under the pressure of the chemo and the steroids (and perhaps some other drug) was too hard.  At about six o’clock in the evening I would feel OK for a while, but by nine or so a real lassitude had set in again.  When I decided to go to bed I would find that the decision made no difference.  Two hours later I would still be lying on the sofa.  I spent the time staring straight ahead.  No watching films; no TV; no radio; no books; no magazines or journals.  No memories; no thoughts; no plans for the future.  Nothing.  Each day passed like this in pure blankness, punctured by pangs of depression that were almost unbearable and which made going back into hospital for the second five days of chemo easy...Slowly, as the chemo went on, things got worse.  There were a few hours, especially in the early evening, that were almost OK, but the rest of the time was grim.  There was no pain again, just increasing weakness, continued lack of appetite and growing depression.

   Then came the piece on David Milch in The New Yorker, Milch being the author of several shows but now chiefly known as the creator of Deadwood (he wrote the just released concluding movie to the series as well); the 74 year old writer also is experiencing the rapid onset of Alheizmer's and spoke to a friend about what he was feeling: Denial, I think, is a sort of ongoing operative procedure—you try and proceed as if you’re capable, as if you weren’t ill.  And then begin making concessions to the fact that you are...Things that you can’t remember any longer, in particular—it’s like shifting the gears of the engine of a car, except to the extent that it absolutely isn’t.  You just move through the day experiencing a series of awarenesses of what’s gone in terms of your capacities.  And there are physiological consequences.  I’ve been describing, I guess, mental consequences, but there are absolute physical limitations that you live into, increasingly.  I never thought I’d be quoting a Paul Simon song, at least not in public, but “Hello, darkness, my old friend.”  There’s an experience you have as every day goes on of what you’re no longer capable of and...it’s an accumulation of indignities.  At a more fundamental level, it’s an accretion of irrevocable truths: this is gone, and that’s gone.  And you try to restrict the induction of self-pity, which is one of the complications of the illness.  Apart from what’s gone because of physiological change, there’s a change of spirit.  You awaken and inventory where you are on this day in terms of what you can’t do, what you can’t think...More than anything else, one would like to think of oneself as being capable as a human being.  The sad truth, imposed with increasing rigor, is you aren’t.  You aren’t normal anymore.  You’re not capable of thinking in the fashion you would hope to as an artist and as a person.  Things as pedestrian as not being able to remember the day.  Sometimes where you’ve been.  There have been a couple of times when I haven’t been able to remember where I live.  And then there are compensatory adjustments that you make in anticipation of those rigors, so that you can conceal the fact of what you can’t do.  It’s a constriction that becomes increasingly vicious.  And then you go on.

   Both accounts took courage, not only to face their conditions and lives but to write about it and expose it to the world, giving the rest of us a preview of just how quickly things can change.  These altering events are happening and have happened to millions of people around the world, often in silence and often quietly tucked away in a hospital or a rest home.  I try to quiz my friends into imagining where they are in life, asking them to picture themselves on a one-week stay at a resort where they checked in on Monday morning.  The pools, the food, the dancing and new friends have all been great; but where do they feel that they are in the stay?  For me, I picture myself as somewhere near Thursday evening, still days away from dragging my rollaway bag to the front desk and preparing myself for those disappointing words that will signal the end...are you ready to check out?  But then vacations sometimes change or get interrupted.  There are no guarantees.  As the saying goes, if you have your health you have everything...the dying billionaire would gladly trade away his or her riches, as would the famous celebrity riddled with cancer.  Without your health, you have nothing.

   The other night, after a near-perfect day of sun and sit-on-the-patio weather, I was caught by the beautiful coloring of the clouds as the sun tickled them with it light.  It was a free painting to humble the soul of anyone who would look up in that instant.  I took a quick picture, went back in to call my wife (unfortunately she was busy on the phone), then came back out for another picture only to find something even more beautiful.  Ominous, yes, but stunning in its own right.  Something was coming in and coming in quickly, a change, a radical change, and in a few minutes even that glimmer would be gone.  Thunder and rain had arrived as if to wash the slate clean, to blow off the excess pollen and to test the stain on the deck and the resilience of the overhanging leaves nearby.  But for the grass and the bugs below, and the birds tuckered in their clustered shelters, it was life itself.  Renewal and growth.  The tables were being cleared and the settings replaced.  A new group of vacationers were scheduled to be arriving for their own stay at this resort, ready to check in once our rooms were vacant.