"At least, do no harm." --Hippocrates 

My medical journey, which is supposed to be a journey of life,

Is really a journey of death.

I’m shuttled back and forth from one doctor to the next,

As if I were some senseless shuttlecock or ball in a grisly game.

So many specialists!  Yet little was told to me about my terrible disease;

And nothing at all about what the treatments would do to me.

I found out what they would do, only as and when the evil effects emerged.

Not the Oath of Hippocrates, but my insurance policy,

Keeps my life going on for a little way,

Until my light of life goes dead, and I forever go away.

Only two doctors—and if God be there and care, God bless them both!—

Have shown me any sign of caring.

Now, I know this one unpleasant procedure is necessary, but it is still so degrading:

At least seven men and one woman so far have stuck their fingers up my rectum.

That’s right--rectum.  This is not a pretty poem--this is what’s happening to me!

Once would be bad enough--but so many times serve to emphasize

That I am not just a spirit or mind looking out on the world with life-lit eyes,

But also a beast--a beast, with a rectum: and I’m a creature that is going to die.

But again, it is a necessary procedure--no real cause to complain.

It’s just that it makes me realize

How unlikely it is that anything or anyone, up high in that great huge sky,

Cares at all about me, or my sorrow and pain;

Or loves my life; or values at all the vast value of the worlds within me;

Or will stir the energy from a star to preserve my unique self, my precious inner I.

My life is a daily torment of thoughts

Of how easy it would have been for this fate not to have fallen on me.

So many little things, if they had been done differently,

Would have spared me.

But now, I am a walking dead man.  And, in more ways than one.

This cancer is probably going to kill me.  But before then, I have already died.

In my body, the fountains of life and love have all dried,

Collateral damage caused by my medical treatments.

I can no longer love a woman in the so-called way of a man with a maid.

I cannot even have the lonely love of solitary pleasure.

They have taken away my testosterone, and now I have almost no sexual desire.

I’m sterile, impotent, not even a male--not even really a man—

Just a wretched human being, suffering.

And facing a future diminished by the teeth of cancer.

And this is how, for the rest of my little life, I shall be,

If they keep refusing to cut this cancer out of me.

So it’s just me, and possibly God, and dark eternity.

I’m lonely.

I’m afraid.

=======================


Written by Michael LP, aka MLP
aka PoetWithCancer, aka PWC, aka Mr. Poet
Written on Thursday, April 9, 2010  11:05 am
Copyright (C) 2011 by Michael L.P.  All rights reserved
(I still copyright my writings, for my estate)