Fear

            

           By nature we all come into this world very afraid.  We start out as microscopic cells that morph and grow into something that is living and feeling.  On the day that we are born, we make an enormous breakthrough.  The world in which we have been created disappears around us never to be seen again.  Think about how scary that really is.  It seems only natural that living organisms must experience fear when they are born.  It’s almost as if the baby who cries after being born is saying how am I going to survive in this new world?

               

There I am.  I am three years old.  It is cold outside and I am wearing a green osh-kosh bigosh jacket and mittens with a winter hat on.  My parents are taking me to see The Muppets on Ice.  Of course I don’t really understand any of this, I’m three years old, and all I know is that my mother is holding me and we are on a city street.  It turns out that there has been an accident.  A taxi cab cut off my father and my father rear ended him.  This was my first memory.  I don’t really remember how I felt but it was probably a mix of confusion and fear.  And then the memory just fades away.

I spent a good part of my first few years with a great deal of fears.  I remember being very afraid of some adults and older children.  They just looked so large, and some of them just stared right through you.  On my first day of kindergarten, I was given a place to sit the same as the other children.  My teacher then gave us something to color.  I remember starting to cry because I wanted to go home and be with my parents.  I didn’t want to be around all of these new people.  I had a family that I belonged to and a house that I lived in.  Why did I have to go to this place?  Damn you Horace Mann for coming up with the idea of compulsory schooling. 

However, thinking back on these early episodes of my life, there is a lesson.  Fear passes.  I remember these two moments in detail but yet the aftermath is gone.  The body cannot go on in a state of fear always.  Sure there are many things to be afraid of, but there are also things that make us not afraid.  In those two moments of fear, the fear passed because someone helped me through it.  My mother held me when we had an accident.  My teacher calmed me down when I was upset at school.  We can all get through our fears, when we realize that there will always be someone there to help us.  

Shock

                “I think you have a leukemia.” 

                Wait a minute here.  Slow down doc.  What leukemia?  Cancer?  Scary shit?  No that can’t be right.  You see I was just running a few fevers and had some swollen gums.  I’ve been out doing all my regular stuff.  Hell I’m probably in the best shape I’ve been in a while.  I’m 28 years old this can’t be happening, oh shit my brain’s about to explode. 

                Those are some of the things that I said to myself as I looked calmly back into the face of the doctor. 

                There I was sitting in the emergency room with my wife watching Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune, waiting as usual as everyone waits in an emergency room.  I really didn’t feel too sick.  Sure I had been to the doctor a couple of times for some symptoms during the previous few weeks, but they assured me that it was probably a virus and it would just take some time to get over.  So there we sat waiting watching television.  We saw an older man trying to pick up a woman in the ER and damn he was kicking it good.  Who knew the ER could be a hot spot for singles right? 

                So eventually we went in.  They did all the standard stuff, ask your medical history, take my blood pressure, and do some blood work.  Then the inevitable waiting for results.  Whatever, we were sure it would be nothing.  I had spoken to the dentist and he thought that my swollen gums could be oral herpes.  Alright, not the most pleasant thing, but not too bad.  So we waited and waited.  Now like most people I had been to the emergency room before, but something about this time was different.  It seemed like all the people next to me were leaving before me, and I wondered why. 

                Then I got the news.  No one every really considers how they are going to react to bad news.  As an emotional guy, I thought perhaps if I heard bad news I might break down and cry.  But I didn’t.  I just sat there calmly, like a peace had come over me.  It was like all the little bullshit that we all seem to worry about on a daily basis just went away.  My wife immediately started crying and I told her that it was ok.  Don’t worry about me I’m going to be fine.  Maybe that’s just how the body has to react.  It’s just too much to take in all at once. 

                I guess that is what shock is.  It is a time when your body is not sure really what is going on, almost like a dream.  It’s your body’s way of not being able to cope with something that is happening.  But I made a very important decision during those first few hours of shock after hearing the news.  This cancer wasn’t going to kill me.