|
|
It is my own philosophy that in everyone’s lifetime, there is a certain event that takes place which paves the way for two different paths of either achievement or failure. It can strike at any given moment and has no sympathy for age or experience. My own experience was defined by a diagnosis of testicular cancer at the youthful age of thirteen, at a time when most my age were creating fond memories to be reminisced upon at a later point in life. Ironically humorous, my sickness was initiated upon watching “The Tom Green Show.” On this particular episode, the host himself had just gone into remission for testicular cancer and had demonstrated methods of self-checking one’s own body for signs of disease. Still in the “mindset” as I like to call it, of a thirteen year-old whose most abundant concern was where I would be going that night, I initially paid little attention to the distraction on the television screen. Thinking about it now, the afternoon plays in my mind like the beginning of a movie: the unknowing adolescent watching TV foreshadows the later, darker side of the plot in which sickness will overtake all. These were the last days of my true youth, the thirteen years which others can call eighteen, and the ones which would cry me to sleep later nights thinking about how it was before I had contracted my illness. Within a time span of two or three weeks after witnessing the television program, I preceded to take the shower which would periodically replay in my mind for the remainder of my entire life. I stripped my clothes to the floor, making sure to let the water run a minute to warm up before I entered the enclosed glass tower. Strapping my towel to the sliding door, I stepped into the next year of my life just as I would any other previous day. I went through the motions: shampoo, conditioner, and then the concluding stage of cleansing with a bar of soap. Stomach, arms, legs; it was all systematic until I felt “the bump”. The irony of the bump is how passive and trivial something as minor as a slight inflammation seems in context. Yet, that slight bump sent a wave of chills up my spine colder than any winter breeze nature could muster. These were the chills that God creates, specifically for moments in life when you know your life is about to stray off the assumed path of normality. Embarrassment would be my enemy in the days that followed.
|
