Waiting on a biopsy, working on the brief
Saturday, April 23, 2011 at 10:07AM Saw the dentist on Monday and ended up having a impromptu biopsy collection for the possibility of oral cancer. Don't figure the odds to be high, and yet it has preyed on my mind for the week - in part because they cut something out and damn it! All of a sudden you've got this wound that hurts like hell and is a constant reminder of the biopsy in progress.
The danger of my position right now is that if I don't work, the money doesn't flow. That's the inherent vulnerability of the sole proprietor, no matter how many clients he has. It most definitely gets me thinking about 8 mouths to feed as the one provider.
Fortunately, I have good healthcare through my continuing tie to Enterra, but like too many families in this country, I can easily scenarioize a financial collapse if the right person is hit with a medical calamity - namely, me.
Yes, I have good long-term disability, but frankly, that is always life support after you've taken the X-month hit of lost income and the policy finally kicks in. It's designed to prevent bankruptcy but not much else. I am life insured to a very high degree, but millions don't replace a father, so there's comfort there but not the sort you want in the here and now.
I'm not complaining so much about my personal economy right now, because it's good. It's just that realization that if I were to disappear from my work engagements, clients won't pay for non-work. I'm not at the full-time position, like at the Naval War College, where I could slide by for quite some time, doing the minimum to keep collecting the paycheck. We eat what I kill and what I kill is a based on momentum. Take me out of circulation for 12-18 months while I fight something and where are we?
It's not an abstract thought for me. I remember going through my first-born's cancer. It was all-consuming for both Vonne and I. I could barely perform at work for almost two years. Luckily, I was well-established enough that I skimmed by during that period. I just don't have that construct now. What I do isn't rewarded by the one position. Like a lot of professionals I have to create my own network of work, making me the weak link - or more specifically my health.
Again, odds are low for me on this one. I don't smoke, chew or pursue cigars. I do have structural teeth issues from so-so orthodontics in my youth that I will probably end up correcting the harder way now.
The weird thing is, about 80 percent of my health issues in my life have occurred in maybe a ten-square-inch chunk on the right side of my head (ears, sinus, lymphs, teeth, eyes), with the original structural cause being that I'm systematically small on my right side, compared to my left. It's a tiny difference; it's just systematic. A real medical expert can spot it by looking at my face. It's about a one-in-one-thousand condition that's benign in general, and yet it creates these structural stress points on my right side. I was simply born this way. My lopsidedness has defined me, right down to my cock-eyed optimism (one eye being higher than the other)! It reminds me of reading about the Apollo program (book I'm finishing now) where the original design flaws, made years earlier, combine with a host of small issues to create the one catastrophe at the worst time. The human body is an amazingly complex thing, with supreme powers of adaptation (like me squeezing my right eye for decades to achieve 20/20 vision before I got prisms). But it all catches up to you in the end and the cascade eventually swarms you. All you really have is the choice of how you define yourself - functioning or not?
And there we're talking the mysterious world of mental health, where I do find myself feeling glad that I have plenty of reasons to stay focused. Emily, my eldest and 17-year-cancer survivor, came home last night from college and my house of eight felt so familiar - right out of my childhood (we were a family of nine). I realize I've spent almost five decades recreating my youth and now that I have it, I would like to keep that achievement for a while, knowing that loss and additions are to come but treasuring the configuration right now - a sort of golden moment poised between what you know and what you anticipate, like getting to know all these wonderful people in their adult lives. I would trade my entire career for ten minutes of that future; it's the only story that really interests me - along with the evolution of my marriage (coming up on 25 years this June & 29 years together).
I also fear that if there's something bad, I'll end losing something - like maybe my sense of taste. Then I realize all the major adjustments I've made over my life - stuff that other people would find amazing from their perspective (even as, of course, I'd find the same to be true about them). Again, human will is amazing. I recently achieved my life-long dream of being able to sleep with my mouth closed. It only took 48 years and about ten surgeries, none of which were performed for that reason and yet, I am given this small-but-significant gift in reply for the efforts, and I treasure the ability - the sense of peace I achieve by this act. And again, we lose everything over time. It's just so great when you win one.
And so I feel a bit frozen: it's just that lull between somebody cutting something out of your body and awaiting the verdict. Issue is real enough, and I have a ready excuse of a recent trauma. I just don't have any frame of reference to judge my story versus what may come back from the lab. I just know that if it's bad, our entire collective existence pivots on a dime.
Again, been there and done that, and I wrote the book (which Vonne and I are talking to my agency now about serializing as eBooks). In the end, we all go through it. The question is only timing and circumstances.
But it does remind you of the refrain, "At least you've got your health," as well as the larger reality of the shift in risk from groups to individuals that has unfolded for most Americans these past several decades. A lot of us, whether we realize it or not, are "sole proprietors."
Something to get off my chest, I guess. You tell yourself you're not going to worry, but when you're somebody who makes a living imagining unfolding futures that are both good and bad, your mind wanders. So I write it here and it's gone from my head, and I can work done today instead of being trapped in this thought.
Meanwhile, I retool the brief for a six-pack of talks I'll be giving in IL, CA, PA, PA, VA and GA over the next six weeks. It just felt right to revamp. You keep the core slides you cannot live without, but you have this sense that what people will want to hear right now is X, and so you build in that direction, the excitement being you are performing, for the first time, new slides. Some of the slides I've had in mind for years, others came on lately. But the look and feel will be decidedly different. Office 2011 for Macs has some capabilities I've been waiting on for a while. Naturally, I am already stressing this machine by asking the program to work on the edge of its capabilities.
But what else is new?
Reader Comments (9)
This is of course a major structural issue with our countries competitiveness... We've seen again and again examples (and in my own family) where a heath issue can take an overachiever, someone who is quite well off and destitute them. This of course makes many people less willing to take risks in creativeness, engineering, careers etc... and the boundaries are not pushed quite as far. If one extrapolates this down the road a bit, from a pure capitalistic perspective, one might imagine that the country is less well off without a functioning healthcare system that supports the *basic* needs of its citizens.
P.S. Thoughts, hopes and prayers for an optimal outcome on the biopsy.
P.P.S. Have you tried Keynote for the Mac? I find it to be *far* superior to PPT. Transitions, handling of media, etc...etc...etc...
Wishing you the best. Really enjoy learning from your work. -AJ
Bryan,
I have and I don't yet see the need to change. If I ran media, then yes, but I still find PPT superior for my way of presentation, where my average slide have 50-100 items that all appear, move, disappear, etc. It's the animation that I stress.
As ever, reading your concerns, delights, committments....and wonder regarding your family and magnificent Spouse; these are the best writings you give us, and to yourself.
while I appreciate much of all the other things I read here...it is those above that have the greatest and most lasting meaning.
You are and will be in my prayers. We are very much looking forward to your talk in Johnstown, PA in a little over two weeks. I hope that you and your family have a happy and blessed Easter.
Tom,
My family and I will be sending positive thoughts and prayers your way. I have been carrying your books in my rucksack (literally whenever I am working in the gap), and having positive yet realist concepts to return to always helped me stay the course during long and frustrating jobs away from the family. Moving the trilogy completely over to eBook is a great call. Keep working and think positive thoughts. You have lots of folks behind you.
-Dan
My prayers are with you, Tom.
Tom
You are also in my prayers. I hope you feel God's grace and love.
Lou
Tom,
My thoughts and prayers for your health.
Ivan