Profit And Loss
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I had been wondering ever since I had been diagnosed hepc+ why I had begun to cry so much. Of course at first I thought it was just me, until I discovered that everyone got the same effect. Emotional and weepy is even listed in the official side effects in the Roche leaflets and their Pegassist booklet. Why?
One of the reasons I think is loss. I caught a comment on Jonathans blog last week how he had been admiring himself in the mirror. Nothing new there, of course. But I commented on his post that I had just done the same thing that morning. Then it struck me that I hadn`t checked myself in the mirror for weeks but had always done so before.
You see, I used to go to a gym. I used to do some weights and punchbag work and then swim and sauna afterwards. Like everyone who goes to a gym, or health club as they like to be known now, I was very conscious of my body. There are mirrors everywhere and if you are doing serious weights you are concentrating on muscle definition etc. So you are either looking at the pretty girls working out or yourself – it`s the nature of the sport.
But because of an unknown fatigue I was experiencing 5 years ago or so I stopped weight training, but still kept up the swimming and saunas. Now, at the beginning of tx I stopped even that. That is a big loss out of my life.
Then there is my work, my business which I built up over 14 years. This same unknown fatigue along with a general malaise caused me to wind it down after a hernia operation last year. It was through routine tests because of the operation that I was discovered hepc+. The discovery of that in itself involves grief and loss.
Then, naturally there is my age. I am 50 this year. Time is moving inexorably forward, never back. In the excellent Startrek film “Generations”, the one where Catain Kirk is killed, there is a powerful scene between Dr. Soren ( Malcolm McDowell) and Captain Picard (Patrick Stewart)
Soren, whose entire family were wiped out by the Borg, is desperate to get back to the nexus, a place where time has no meaning, and where you can live out your hopes and dreams over and over again. He tries to get Picard to help him get there. With a wonderfully wild look in his eyes, Soren says,
“Time is the fire in which we burn, Captain. There is so little time and we leave so many things undone – I know you understand”
As it happens Picard understands only too well. His brother and his nephew have both just been killed in a fire, and the normally stoic like Picard is visibly shaken.
All this is about loss. Loss of health, youthfulness, mental acumen. Professional people normally on the ball, being forgetful, dithery, irritable, can`t be arsed any more.
I found a great article on this which I read the other day and which has helped me greatly. www.hepc-connection.org/newsletter/01-03_04/depressed.shtml It mentions the importance of tears as a healing aid in this process of coming to terms with a new chapter in life. Thankfully, for most of us it is a chapter that only lasts 6 months or a year. But still a significant amount of time.
In my next post I will share some stuff on tears and print some astounding discoveries on the nature of tears themselves.
I had been wondering ever since I had been diagnosed hepc+ why I had begun to cry so much. Of course at first I thought it was just me, until I discovered that everyone got the same effect. Emotional and weepy is even listed in the official side effects in the Roche leaflets and their Pegassist booklet. Why?
One of the reasons I think is loss. I caught a comment on Jonathans blog last week how he had been admiring himself in the mirror. Nothing new there, of course. But I commented on his post that I had just done the same thing that morning. Then it struck me that I hadn`t checked myself in the mirror for weeks but had always done so before.
You see, I used to go to a gym. I used to do some weights and punchbag work and then swim and sauna afterwards. Like everyone who goes to a gym, or health club as they like to be known now, I was very conscious of my body. There are mirrors everywhere and if you are doing serious weights you are concentrating on muscle definition etc. So you are either looking at the pretty girls working out or yourself – it`s the nature of the sport.
But because of an unknown fatigue I was experiencing 5 years ago or so I stopped weight training, but still kept up the swimming and saunas. Now, at the beginning of tx I stopped even that. That is a big loss out of my life.
Then there is my work, my business which I built up over 14 years. This same unknown fatigue along with a general malaise caused me to wind it down after a hernia operation last year. It was through routine tests because of the operation that I was discovered hepc+. The discovery of that in itself involves grief and loss.
Then, naturally there is my age. I am 50 this year. Time is moving inexorably forward, never back. In the excellent Startrek film “Generations”, the one where Catain Kirk is killed, there is a powerful scene between Dr. Soren ( Malcolm McDowell) and Captain Picard (Patrick Stewart)
Soren, whose entire family were wiped out by the Borg, is desperate to get back to the nexus, a place where time has no meaning, and where you can live out your hopes and dreams over and over again. He tries to get Picard to help him get there. With a wonderfully wild look in his eyes, Soren says,
“Time is the fire in which we burn, Captain. There is so little time and we leave so many things undone – I know you understand”
As it happens Picard understands only too well. His brother and his nephew have both just been killed in a fire, and the normally stoic like Picard is visibly shaken.
All this is about loss. Loss of health, youthfulness, mental acumen. Professional people normally on the ball, being forgetful, dithery, irritable, can`t be arsed any more.
I found a great article on this which I read the other day and which has helped me greatly. www.hepc-connection.org/newsletter/01-03_04/depressed.shtml It mentions the importance of tears as a healing aid in this process of coming to terms with a new chapter in life. Thankfully, for most of us it is a chapter that only lasts 6 months or a year. But still a significant amount of time.
In my next post I will share some stuff on tears and print some astounding discoveries on the nature of tears themselves.
posted by Paul | 5:26 PM
2 Comments:
Dear Paul,
I agree, tears are wonderful, cleansing and an amazing release. On Friday nights after the shot, when things are at the lowest for me, I cry.
Do find, though, that physical activity is a necessity, not as a process of fighting this disease, its treatment, or my aging, but to welcome these things, to be strong to cope with them and to grow from them. Can't imagine getting through this without yoga, for both its meditative and physical rewards.
On a previous blog, you noted how probably none of us will come out of this unchanged, unaffected. Perhaps, and this is my great hope, we will come out of this with greater spirit, evolved by our experience and not crushed by it.
Thanks for your comment Sue. Yes, I am hoping to get out more for walks and to begin stretching again. I do my own version of Tai Chi which consists mainly of waving my arms about and kicking everything in site - but all done very, very, slowly.
I always make sure no one is watching.
Paul.
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