I've been offline for a couple of weeks now. This hasn't necessarily been intentional, but it has been necessary. I recently had a health scare that sent me spiraling into a pit of anxiety, covering all the necessary stops through denial/isolation, bargaining, etc.
It was a lump.
I found a lump on/near one of my testicles.
It scared the hell out of me. This was weeks ago. I didn't tell a single person. Not one. At first I denied it was there. Then, I bargained with myself and said, "I'll give it a week or two and if it doesn't go away, then I'll go to the doctor." Eventually, I realized that it wasn't going away, and I had to do something. I resigned myself to calling the urologist who did my vasectomy. I figured skip the general practitioner and head straight to the specialist. When I called to set my appointment, I set it for the earliest possible date.
I couldn't handle waiting another day or week. Once I had accepted that this situation was real, that is was worth examining, there was nothing that could have held me back from that appointment.
The appointment revealed that I have a spermatocele, a relatively harmless condition brought about by a blocked tube in my testes. It is nothing to be alarmed about, nothing that needs any further medical analysis, and I was free and on my way.
This was last week, a week ago to be exact, and for some reason I am still working my way through the news. While I am in perfectly good health, I still get the jitters, an uneasy anxiousness that sits within the pit of my stomach and reminds me, maybe for the first time, that I'm mortal, really mortal.
The most extreme medical treatment I've ever had was to get my tonsils out, maybe when I had my wisdom teeth removed, but I've never had anything serious, nothing that made me really concerned for my overall well-being. Those weeks when I didn't tell anyone were some of the most anxious of my life.
The only person who really picked up on it, the only one who really looked me in the eye and said, "What's going on with you?" was a twenty-year-old hostess at my work who often reveals herself to be an astute observer of people's personalities. Because she persistently asked me what was happening, because she kept insisting something was "going on," I realized that the lump was starting to effect the way I carried myself throughout my day, and I decided to take action.
The first person I told was my wife, and the moment I had the news out of my mouth, I was on the internet and looking up my doctor. I had an appointment for three days later.
There was no reason for me to delay the appointment, besides a fear of the unknown, a fear of recognizing that there was something potentially serious happening with my health, and I was a fool to let it go on so long. As I sit her typing these few choppy paragraphs, trying to work my way through the residual relief and fear, I realize, as I often do, that writing would have helped me through all of this. Writing is processing. Writing is putting things in order, puzzling out knotted threads, finding a way to navigate difficult situations, and I shouldn't allow things like this to keep me from the computer for so long. I am really backed up on promise posts (yes, I'm still doing those, even though I've missed two during this time), and I may just march forward instead of trying to catch up on the back log.
I'm feeling more and more like myself with each day. Today will help. I'm watching a friends daughter for a couple of hours, allowing Shea and her a couple of hours of play. In the background as I write this, the girls are creating an original song with an electric keyboard, a pen, and a small pad. Their giggles and their earnest efforts to commit words to the page serve as an inspiration for this small effort, my effort to somehow capture the complexity of what I've experienced in a blog post. I have a feeling I'm not done with this subject. I'm done with it for the blog, but I have a feeling it will find its way into my writing in other forms. Writing is processing after all.
Thanks for listening.
For me, writing is also telling the secrets, in one form or another, that are making me sick. I think you did that here, and you helped me tell mine. Here's a poem from Kim Stafford's personal website:
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After long delay, ignorant of what you guarded
when it came volcanic to your mind, there to be
hoarded smoldering until you found a way to tell it,
your secret is out—your joy too tender to entrust
to anyone, your pain too dangerous to reveal
until you do. And there it is, a birth, with blood,
to celebrate.
But then the bowl in the heart,
where such things first appear, has something
new to hide, some fingerling creature silver
in the dark, with jagged fins and tender wings
that must be held, locked up, suppressed, fed
crumbs as you fend off the world. Little one,
must you leave me now?
Thus we breathe our holy secrets one by one.
So glad you've written this, Kyle, and so grateful to know you through all the ups and downs. You're brave and vulnerable all at once, a powerful combination that shows through every word you've written.
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