Question: When diagnosed with severe illness, do you fight like hell or walk away (from life)? When faced with the ultimate choice, there may be offers of comfortable, safe, warm places to stay. However, in the end, will you choose the solitude and movement of life or pour a host of chemicals through your body’s veins in hopes of living three, six, or nine months more? There will be a myriad of kindnesses and struggles, each bringing people together and, on occasion, sometimes challenging their commitment to the vision set for themselves.
To be more visionary, stringing the body to repeated rounds of chemotherapy offers non-joyful, conflicted rounds of clinical togetherness through an endless maze of medical tests. Moments such as these highlight that aging in America makes people invisible. Even in crowded waiting rooms, in the thunderous booms of clanging bedpans, like a salmon swimming upstream against the tide of infirmity, one wanders the solitary existence of medical marvel. Even in such moments, it’s hard for the ship to remain moored, but it’s never wholly undone.