Editor’s note: This entry is kind of self-absorbed. Sorry. But a lot of what I’ve written this year is based on real-life experiences. Please excuse the self-absorption.
Over the last couple weeks, I’ve been feeling kind of sorry for myself. For one, I’m a Jets fan. The reasons for self-pity are legion there. Just Endure The Suffering.
For another, in case you didn’t know, I have Myalgic Ecephalomyelitis (ME). It’s a hard thing when your life is about driving yourself and challenges, because you need to pace yourself and not work to capacity. My workout approach is to exceed capacity. That’s a bad thing for me now.
Waaah! Pity me.
But there’s a very important thing I’ve forgotten. ME is often a diagnosis of exclusion. You rule things out. As part of that process, I went to a gastroenterologist.
An early symptom of this whole thing was stomach pain. Not awful. It was just kind of there. So when I got my mandatory colonoscopy I also got an endoscopy. And they found out I have Barrett’s Esophagus–a disorder caused by acid reflux where your esophagus mutates into your small intestine.
That’s right, I’m a mutant. But I don’t sprout bad-ass blades out of my knuckles and autoheal like Wolverine. (Don’t wear yellow spandex, either, thank God.) My super power is the ability to potentially develop esophageal cancer. It’s one of the nastier cancers, often undiagnosed until symptoms appear–which is typically too late for anything to be done. The mortality rate for esophageal cancer is high.
In other words, it’s likely that I don’t have and won’t get esophageal cancer because I got ME. Without those health problems, I wouldn’t have gone to the gastro doctor. If I hadn’t gone there, I wouldn’t have been diagnosed with Barrett’s and there’s a possibility I would have wound up with a cancer that tends to be fatal once it’s discovered.
Put simply, it’s possible ME saved my life.
To my embarrassment, I had forgotten that until it was time to get ready for my endoscopy. They’ll scrape out the mutant cells, removing my super powers, and allowing me to have ice cream for dinner next weekend. Yum.
So, if you think about it, as much as I’m frustrated by my limitations, I’m an incredibly lucky man. It’s a pretty dark cloud, as clouds go, but a pretty incredible silver lining I’d allowed myself to lose track of.
There’s almost always a silver lining. It may not be this extreme, but it’s there. In my case, I forgot. I’ll try to do better going forward.
Identifying a silver lining and holding firm to it is an area in which you can probably beat my ass.
As I process all this stuff, the importance of trying to hold onto every possible silver lining is becoming clear.
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