Thought Picnic: Being humanly human in my humanness

Many little things

Even as stoic as one might appear to be, appearances can quite easily be deceptive; mental capacity can so soon be depleted by the confluence of situations and events that are outside one’s control, yet impactful because of one’s attachment or affinity to those things.

It is a situation one cannot put into words to explain to any coherence, the what, the who, the when or the how, it’s like a faucet dripping, nothing of note as it drips, but significant it is collects and makes a sound for each drip. If dripping into a container, it soon fills up and you can be driven to distraction just hearing that interminable dripping.

Let it drain away

It is a kind of fluster that sleep will not cure and that is if you can find that kind of restful sleep that can make you relax and awake with a sense and feeling of strength and readiness for the day. From experience, you just give it time to dissipate, treat it like a form of intoxication that eventually wears off for the return of your sobriety. Then I am too much of a control freak that intoxication is not a lived experience.

A type of frustration seems to loom making you quite irritable and showing up in a lot that you do, decisions that come to the fore that with hindsight will have you nodding to yourself that you have allowed yourself through circumstance to be a fool. You just cannot deceive yourself even if you choose to ignore the obvious.

Every bit human

Vulnerability and naivety are dangerous condiments in a time of apparent mental weakness. You know you are in it and hope it is over before it becomes a harbinger of rue. Obviously, this is where companionship matters, we are far apart and planning on a rendezvous soon as we have not been together since mid-January.

I appreciate his helplessness because he wants to do so much that cannot be bridged by our separation, his soothing and wise words are a great comfort, a tower of strength he is and so quickly notices when I am not particularly there and now, he understands to give me the space to sort my head out. If we were together, the human touch, the hug, that feeling of time collapsed, love expressed, and tenderness experienced would have made all the difference.

It would get better, I can do this much as I acknowledge, I am only being human, my strength will return, and the wonder of hope will refresh me for what is ahead. All towards the healing of being with and the comfort of seeing Brian, keeps me going.

Cancer is a human experience, not a battle won or lost

In the great spirit of man

I did not know much about Chadwick Boseman or the body of work he had done. In fact, when Black Panther was a box office hit, I was still thinking of other representative films as Fences, Hidden Figures and Moonlight.

His passing at 43 after suffering stages of colon cancer diagnosed from 2016 during which he exhibited amazing acting prowess in seminal films is not only commendable but a show of stoicism and human spirit under great life-threatening affliction and infirmity. In the great spirit of man are such fortitude and immeasurable strength.

Cancer is not a battle

When I had Kaposi’s Sarcoma, a form of skin cancer as a result of HIV complications in 2009, I was 43, each time I read of people dying from cancer I find it difficult to appreciate the narrative of losing the battle to cancer.

As we live with it and sometimes live through it, it is rarely a battle, we are not at war, that some of us have survived it is one of great providence with many other factors of medicine, medical care, probably good fortune and even state of mind, but I did not cross swords with cancer and leave it vanquished.

We are given stories to tell

I will not pretend to speak for others who have survived cancer as I have, but what I know was at diagnosis, I was given 5 weeks to live, if my physiology did not respond to the treatment favourably. The consultant, however, was confident that if I did respond well, it would be fine. In just 5 weeks, I will mark the 11^th year of my first session of chemotherapy.

Cancer is a scourge on humanity, maybe even a terror and terrorist as it ravages our bodies and we are left at the mercies of many things outside our control except for our human spirit that remains a force of life until our bodies give in to find eternal rest.

For me, I have been given a story and the way I tell it is, cancer happens, it is part of life, some of us live it to the end and others come through it, but until we are gone, we are still here, to some a hope, to others a light, that it does not have to end with just that.

All experiences are gifts to medicine

Any death from cancer reveals our vulnerability even more, to such a young man, there are no easy answers but the fond memories and tributes we can offer in recognition of his life along with the support and sympathy we can offer his survivors.

In everyone’s experience is also some new knowledge for medicine to give us all new hopes for survival. That is what gave my consultant confidence at my prognosis and that is why I encourage inviting medical students to my consultations. I am a story of possibility not of triumphalism over cancer.

May the soul of Chadwick Boseman rest in peace.