A Blessing and a Curse: An Essay
Since 2009, I’ve been hospitalized 6 times, each for something different and on 3 of the 6 occasions for potentially mortal illnesses. Let me give you the background.
In 2009, I had a bilateral laminotomy and micro-discectomy for my L4/L5.
In 2012, I had a double heart bypass. I had a 100% blockage on the “widowmaker” on my left anterior descending artery. The blockage was total and about one inch long. With the widowmaker, if you’re in the hospital and you have a heart incident, you will likely die because the doctors will not be able to perform the necessary bypass in time. The widowmaker is extremely serious and not something to take lightly. Now, as has been my history, I was completely asymptomatic and had zero idea that I had such a severe problem until I took a thallium stress test at the insistence of my cardiologist, Norman Lepor (who is responsible for saving my sorry life), not a regular stress test which demonstrated I was in great shape.
In 2016, I was diagnosed with squamous cell carcinoma in my sphenoid sinus. This cancer is very rare; only 10-12 people a year get it in North America so the doctors don’t have a “working” protocol to treat it. Now, there are two different strains: the bad one and the worse one. I had the worse one and was treated with chemo and radiation over 7 weeks. Also, because this cancer is so rare, the treatment is based on determining what a fatal dose of chemo and radiation will be and then they dial it back by a fraction. To give you some perspective, I was receiving 54.75 rads of radiation per daily treatment; 55 rads is a fatal level. A friend of mine, who works as a medical researcher in a radon lab, heard about my dose (he asked me). He wears a green badge that when it turns red, he can no longer work in the lab for the balance of that month given he has reached the maximum exposure for the month. The level that kicks him out of the lab is 0.1 rad per month. The net effect of my treatment is that he would have had to work in the lab for over 120 years to receive the dosage I received in 7 weeks! Despite the toxic levels of treatment, I went to work every day except on chemo days and only because the chemo treatment took 6-8 hours. In short, I did not lose my hair, I did not throw up, or have any significant side effects of the treatment and did not even have to slow down on my activities. It goes without saying, my doctors were absolutely astounded by my resiliency!
In 2018, I had a hip replacement. I was up and walking in 2 days.
In 2019, I had 3 of my 4 parathyroids surgically removed because my calcium was way too high. No impairment or side effects and I was up and about the next day.
Then in 2021, I had a seizure, spent 8 days in the hospital, 2 weeks in a physical rehab center and am working through the side effects of the drug protocol now. I was put on extremely strong steroids and anti-seizure medicine which have severely impacted my ability to walk, my energy, and my overall ability to function. Additionally, unlike all of the prior speedbumps, this latest version has been excruciatingly painful and not characteristic of my prior infirmities.
The point I want to make is that I am intimately aware of physical and emotional/psychological issues, have been on both sides of pain and life management associated with medical issues and the balance of what I have to say here is highly experiential and not the least bit theoretical. At this point, I’ve lived it all and speak from a position of deep knowledge and experience. Onwards and sideways…
Blessing and Curse of Life. First things first. I have learned that all things in life are concurrently a blessing and a curse. One should strive to find the blessing when it is not apparent and is often overwhelmed by the curse component of its existence. Let me explain how this might work. For years, I weighed 234 pounds. Every year, I made a promise to myself to lose 1 pound and every year I failed. Then I got diagnosed and treated for cancer. I lost 32 pounds in 7 weeks. I was down to my “fighting weight.” One day six months after my treatment ended, I was having lunch by myself in Century City. A colleague of mine who hadn’t seen me in years wandered by. I got up to shake his hand. He saw that I had lost a lot of weight and he was carrying an age-appropriate belly that he wanted to jettison. He looked at me and said, “Man, you’ve lost a ton of weight. How’d you do it?” I responded as follows, “I was on this 7 week diet. It guarantees you will lose 25-40 pounds with 100% certainty. It never fails and 100% of the time, it is not recommended.” My colleague said, “Oh come on, I want that too as I need to lose weight.” I said, “Ok, then get diagnosed with squamous cell carcinoma in your sphenoid sinus, do 7 weeks of chemo and radiation and I guarantee you, you’ll lose the weight.” He responded, “Oh no, I don’t want that.” We said our goodbyes and he moved on.
But I had an epiphany in that exchange, “Cancer was concurrently a curse (which it is) and a blessing (it caused me to lose weight).” What I realized is that every experience in life has the capacity to be both a curse and a blessing but it’s up to me to determine which it will be. And, if you’re working on finding the blessing, know that most of the time, it is deeply hidden and not obvious at all. For example, with my latest episode, I’ve realized, at a truly heartfelt and spiritual level, how blessed I am to have such an incredibly supportive wife and son. They’ve taken on the responsibility of managing every aspect of my treatment and recovery, chauffeured me around, picked up my meds, made the doctor appointments, and on and on. I’ve had only two things to worry about: my health and my work. I spend zero time on my maintenance and as a result, I have more bandwidth for recovery. One can’t place a value on that, but more importantly, what an amazing blessing to have such incredible support! I’m blessed. Others don’t have that and have to contend with the medical system, transporting themselves here and there, going to the market, and on and on. It would be very easy for me to take their support for granted. But I don’t and I acknowledge their value to me with some regularity so that they understand that I’m not a freeloader. Each of you has the opportunity to find the deeply buried blessing in your malady but it’s often hidden and very hard to find. Don’t be discouraged. Keep looking until you find it. But, trust me, it is there no matter how deeply it might be buried.
The Victim or the Warrior. While we do not get to choose our suffering (more often than not), it just finds us and hits us harder than we can imagine we can endure. So, given that you don’t get to choose what happens to you, you still get a choice, namely whether you are going to be a victim or a warrior? This requires a lot of explaining. Imagine a medieval warrior fighting in a battle. Swords are flying at each other. For the warrior to survive the battle, he has to be fully focused on the swords being swung at him. He cannot mope and think about what’s for dinner later that evening. In his case, it is a dangerous distraction. If he wants to prevail, he has to direct 100% of his focus on the battle in front of him and not on some future event that won’t happen if he gets sliced because he was distracted. So, while you don’t get to choose your malady, you do get to choose to be a victim or a warrior. Moreover, whatever you choose is fine and we are not in a position to judge. We don’t wear robes. The choice is yours. And, in light of the profound suffering I endured during this latest bout, I completely understand choosing victimhood over warriorhood. Sometimes the pain is simply too great to go to battle and you have to succumb to the pain/victim component. But, what is important is that you try your hardest to shift from your legitimate victimhood to being a warrior. Not easy. Not obvious. But, the better way to get through the suffering is to battle it and not succumb to it. Make the choice that works best for you. No one can judge you for what you choose. If they do, it is clear they have not felt your pain. Disregard the opinions of others and make whatever choice you feel works best for you.
Mindfulness. In connection with my latest set of health issues, if I am walking and thinking about anything other than one foot in front of the other, I lose my balance and risk taking a fall. As a result, I do my best to block out everything other than walking. This is the epitome of mindfulness … blocking out what isn’t and focusing on what is in front of you. It’s extremely powerful to be deeply engaged in the here and now and not distracted by future or past events. This has been a real gift to me and because of the impairment I’m incurring, I have to make my mindfulness very, very real and not some pop culture notion. I have had virtually zero room for error. Now, the plus is when I’m “here,” I’m really here and not somewhere else. It’s a great feeling. Focus your attention on the here and now and not on whether you’re going to make a full recovery. This is an exceptionally difficult thing to do. It’s our default position to focus on the future, how great we expect to feel, and our recovery. Don’t. It detracts from the here and now and more importantly, it takes away your ability to experience today (which is all you ever have) and instead focus on a future that may never develop. And, if it doesn’t develop, it is very easy to become despondent because the outcome you wished for didn’t happen. Block out wishing about the future. Focus on the here and now. Place all your energy on making it through the day you have instead of a future that may never be yours.
Empathy. We all would say we have empathy. But, part of the problem is our empathy is mostly intellectual, meaning we’re empathetic because we’re supposed to be. We identify it in our heads but not in our hearts and our souls so when we say, “I feel your pain,” it rings hollow to the person you’re saying it to. They know you “feel their pain” only because you’re supposed to. I’ve had numerous very serious medical issues over the last 12 years. But, until this latest malady, I never really suffered. Accordingly, and notwithstanding my experience, my “feeling your pain” was largely intellectual and not truly sincere. This time, I suffered profoundly for numerous days. It was the first time I appreciated why someone would choose to be a victim. The reason is that the pain is overwhelming. I now get it and have true empathy. In essence, I’ve walked in their shoes and I understand how pain (whether physical, spiritual or psychological) can be overwhelming, so much so that the only real choice before you is how long you’ll need to be a victim before you can lift your sword and shift over to being a warrior. Sometimes, you have to go the victim route and now, for the first time in my life, I deeply understand victimhood and do not judge it or the people who make that choice. Having the experience makes my support of a victim considerably more real than it was before I walked in those shoes.
Attitude. A lot of getting through tough situations is determined by your attitude. Now, having a positive attitude in the face of adversity is a very difficult task. But, so much in life is difficult. Although none of us remembers, learning to walk was extremely painful. At first, we didn’t have the strength and trying to get up off the ground stressed our legs and backs and then once we got up, we fell down countless times before we were able to make the rounds on our legs. In short, many things in life are not easy. If you know that, then working on your warriorhood, with all of its speedbumps and obstacles, becomes a project worthy of making the effort, trying to get up on your proverbial feet, falling down, getting up again, and again, until you’re able to start swinging your sword. But, it’s easy to quit and it’s easy to be overwhelmed and therefore it’s important to know that confronting your pain (in whatever form) is a huge undertaking, one that is not going to work the first time you try and will require many attempts to reign it in.
Anxiety. Thinking about the future, your prognosis, recovery, research about your condition, etc. are all generators of anxiety. When I got diagnosed with an extremely rare sinus cancer (as mentioned earlier, only 10-12 people a year in the US get what I got), I spent 5 minutes on WebMD and didn’t do any other research about my condition. What I learned is that there were two strains of my cancer … the bad one and the worse one (I had the worse one) and that because it was so rare, very little was reported about it. The net effect was I made it my business to stay ignorant. That was a real plus. Because I knew little to nothing about my condition and prognosis, I didn’t think about it and exhibited virtually zero anxiety … thanks to the fact I chose ignorance over knowledge. I didn’t know the risk of a bad outcome, so I didn’t worry about it. Besides, even if I read a study in Zimbabwe, was I really going to tell my doctors what to do? Where did I get my medical degree? I am pretty sure they all have one and spent years working on getting it. They’re the ones who should know what to do and I made a point not to try to outthink them. When I finished my treatment and did my 5-month scans and was told that I was cancer-free by my doctors, they then added something you don’t want to hear: “We made a mistake.” WHAT?!!!! They then explained that the mistake they made was that they failed to study me because they’d never had a patient with such intense treatment exhibit so few side effects. They didn’t know how I got through it so unscathed. But they speculated that it had something to do with my family’s support, my complete absence of anxiety and something else that they couldn’t identify. But “absence of anxiety” allowed me not to contribute to my impaired condition. I maintained a positive attitude throughout and did not worry about the outcome. Instead, my focus was on getting through “today’s” treatment (chemo every 21 days and radiation 5 times a week for 7 weeks) and going on about my life.
Physical fitness. This is a big deal. Since 2007, I’ve been working out at least 2 times a week with a world-class trainer and his staff. The net effect is, even though I’m basically a fat lazy person, I have been uncharacteristically physically fit. During a 45-minute workout session, I’ve been clocked at over 1300 reps. In other words, my physical training is intense and it has me being remarkably fit for my age and position in life. I therefore encourage everyone to invest in their fitness in a big way. While I have zero proof that my fitness had anything to do with my mild response to very serious health conditions, I believe it helped me get through them with fewer side effects. Get yourself to a trainer and make it a point to work out fairly intensely (for you) at least 2-4 times a week. Get fit and get well.
Patience. This is a really tough one. When you get impacted by some medical condition, all of your psychic energy is on getting better unless you choose victimhood, in which case that’s where all your energy gets assigned. But if you choose the warrior’s path, you nevertheless have to understand that your recovery is going to take time and typically more time than you’re willing to allocate to it. Back down. Recognize that you’re going to have many, many terrible, horrible days but that it’s the warrior’s way to get up off the ground and resume the fight. You have to allow yourself to fail and be hyper-patient about your recovery and how you feel today.
Listen to your body. A part of being a warrior is listening to your body. You won’t win an award because you “never laid down and rested.” If you’re beat, go to bed if you can. Not everyone has the luxury of owning their own time. But, if you do, follow your body’s direction. And, if you can’t “lie down,” take a short break, gather yourself, and then get back to whatever it was that you have to do. Do the best you can but know that you may not be able to follow every directive your body is sending you because of work or other obligations. Nevertheless, to the extent you can, listen to your body. It takes work to hear the directives so pay attention. Your body will do little more than whisper to you that it needs a break. Do your best to hear the call.
Richie’s Story. When I was recovering from my double bypass surgery, I had to do rehabilitation with a group of people who had also had heart surgery. I was 57 years old and easily 15 years younger than the next youngest person. Imagine how that made me feel. Nevertheless, I did my rehab to the best of my ability. Rehab works like this: you can’t walk into the gym until the bulk of your group has arrived, so you sit in a waiting room for the others to wander in. One cool and wet morning, I arrived a bit early and sat down in the waiting room. A few minutes go by and the door opens very slowly. In walks, no hobbles, Richie. He has COPD and is pulling an oxygen tank behind him. With every breath he takes, he lets out a fairly loud “Eh” … one step “Eh” another step “Eh” and it’s loud and it’s Richie struggling to take a breath. I turn to him and say, “Hi Richie. How’s it going?” Simple enough and good manners on my part. He responds as follows: “Eh, Eh, Eh, Mar Eh, Marty, Eh, Eh, It’s a, Eh, It’s a, Eh, Gre, Eh, Great day. Eh, Eh, Eh.” I recall this experience vividly and I looked at him and said silently to myself, “That’s a great day? Oh my God! If that’s a ‘Great Day’ then I’ve never had a bad day.” I run that exchange across my mind at least once every day. If that was a “Great Day” then I have nothing to complain about. The guy could not breathe and he was hanging onto life by a thread and yet, to him, he was having a Great Day!!!! Ok, what a tremendous gift he gave me. Now, I make sure my daily goal is to make the day a “Great Day.” If Richie could do it with his impairment, then I am obligated to do the same with whatever is eating at me. I encourage each of you to try to emulate Richie and find the “greatness” in every day you get.
Somebody has it worse. Sometimes it’s helpful to count your blessings and sometimes it’s necessary for you to compare your impairment with the impairment of someone else. Knowing that people are worse off than you, while not particularly nice, can help rally you to confront your own suffering. If you’re actively suffering, it is extremely easy to lose sight of anyone else’s suffering no matter how much worse it is than yours, and instead focus on the suffering in front of and inside you. Totally understandable. But, not helpful. Therefore, it can be important to engage in a little bit of comparison with people who have it worse. Especially when, like Richie, they’re nevertheless able to have a Great Day.
Hopefully, this essay helps you deal with your own infirmities. My goal was to share my experience so that if there’s something of value for you here, you can benefit from my experience just like I learned from Richie. Feel free to reach out to me at mj@jannollawgroup.com. I cannot counsel you because I do not have the training or experience to do that, but I can hear you and share my point of view, but then you have to decide what you want to carry with you going forward. Please get well as soon as possible and do your best to get through the travails. And, just maybe, you can have a Great Day!
Authored by Martin B. Jannol