Welcome to Terminal Reason: The Death Project.
Update: Still kicking, sort of...
I'm still here. It's complicated; I can't tell you much anymore in a three sentence summary. However, my health is somewhat precarious: I'm living with a grossly enlarged spleen. The cancer lurks in my bone marrow. I've already outlived what the statistics say; I've already outlived the doctors' expectations from when I bled out.
I must stress: what you read in this blog is the product of a process called expressive writing. One purpose of the website is to leave a picture of my life as a cancer patient. Another purpose of the website is to permit my mind to express ideas which I may never enact, but by writing about them, I gain more control over them.
This expressive writing is a key tool in living my life on my own terms.
If I'm living in fear of something, I have lost control. If, for example, I fear that I will kill myself because of the disease, because of the stressors, then I am no longer controlling my thoughts and ideas. This lack of control can spread to other ideas, to other thoughts, until my entire consciousness is out of my control. By expressing these thoughts in writing, I realize they are powerless. That I am still in control.
The title of this update: yesterday morning I woke up, and my legs were paralyzed. I could not move them. After about 6 hours, they started to work again; they worked fine the rest of the evening, and they seem fine today.
BobW - 02/21/17
This multimedia website is devoted to leaving a picture of the final days of the author, myself, Bob Wanamaker. In July 2015, I was diagnosed, at 53 years of age, with primary myelofibrosis. My initial prognosis was 1 year or so, depending on a couple variables.
Of necessity, much of what captures my attention since then revolves around that cancer and death.
Speaking of which: I nearly died from severe internal bleeding in March of 2016. After this episode, my prognosis was changed to "any day now" or (to borrow another classification suggested by the primary hematologist on the case) "no reason, none, to be optimistic about any aspect of this case." During my hospitalization for this bleeding episode, I was placed in an induced coma for four days; intubated, and nearly died. Apparently, I was quite the mess internally.
This was a pivotal experience for me. I finally realized, believed, I knew, with every ounce of my being, that I was living my final days.
I also realized a few other things: one of them was that my job - not my work - was significantly, and negatively, impacting my health. As difficult as I knew it would be, I decided to leave that job and go on full disability.
I realize that sounds odd, and it is: how can one "choose" to go on full disability? In short, I think that with the right job, I could have worked - maybe not full time, and maybe I'm deluding myself. I think, though, that it would take a great deal of flexibility, ingenuity, and non-standard behavior.
Three things that do not flourish in the typical workplace.
I think my realization was correct: I do believe that I'm paying more attention to my health and that I have the potential to enjoy the last few months of my life. I sincerely doubt, given the strength, the ferocity of this cancer, that I'll be able to significantly increase my lifespan.
My world grows smaller every day; another odd turn of phrase, "grows smaller." Could I not write, in place of those two words, the single word "shrinks?" That would, in all likelihood, work fairly well; however I prefer to think of finding opportunity, of finding room for spiritual growth, even during this period, this period during which my world becomes smaller in some important sense.
As I prepare to die, as I prepare to draw my final breaths, my focus narrows and hardens. I suppose this is normal; this narrowing and hardening. Normal or not, it is upon me, I am living it, and I hope to share it with you.
During this change in my vision, I hope to discover new meaning in my world.
That new meaning, that hard focus, that spiritual growth: that is the primary focus of this project.
You will notice - I hope - that there are two "donate" buttons to the right of the web page. One is for PayPal; one is for GoFundMe. These donation buttons enable you to help me, should you feel so inclined.
As they say in Chicago, donate early, donate often.
