February, 2018 I was separated from my prostate ten days ago. I found something out about myself through that experience… I think… I hope. It was something that confirmed an experience I had ten or so years ago.
The essence of both experiences is that I seem to be able to live in the moment with little anxiety about the future in terms of my own health situation.
In the prostate experience I was able to rely on my “binary situational analysis” for life’s little or big health disasters: “Is it malignant? If it is is it treatable? If it’s treatable is it curable? If it’s not curable is it fatal? If it’s fatal, how soon?”
I’ve not gotten to the last stage of this analysis yet though the older I get the more likely it is to occur, absent my sudden and unanticipated demise.
I was told in December or January that I had prostate cancer and made the decision to have my prostate removed. I had about three weeks to wait till February 9 for the surgery. Over that period I commented to my wife a number of times that I was concerned that I had no awareness of any concern or apprehension about the surgery. Come to think of it, I have been with both of my parents when they were going in for surgery and neither of them exhibited any anxiety.
My father after he was told that his death was imminent, and the family gathered at his bedside to say goodbye regaled us all with stories of his youth, and finished with a request for a strawberry sundae. He was dead two days later.
When the surgery was over I was also in pretty good shape, uncomfortable but not in pain. Again, I think that an open and accepting attitude makes a difference in how we respond to issues of health.
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