One aspect - an enormous aspect - of what disturbed me about Mortality, was the vivid descriptions of what Christopher Hitchins went through.
The pain, the painful medical procedures, the vomiting, loss of voice, weakness, loss of weight, rashes, reactions to drugs, loss of appetite, excruciating pain of just swallowing at one point in the treatments, the stimulation of hope, the death of hope and on and on and on.........................
I'll be sixty in January. I live in the danger zone. I haven't exercised for one second in 8 months and I have been known to consume what physicians call an unhealthy volume of civilized whiskey; in addition the stress level is through the roof.
My biggest fear is having to go through something like that. Or experiencing a health crisis that leaves me incapacitated and not dead.
If my health must go, let my life go with it.
I am finely tuned in to the desperation that defines the rest of my life. A frantic, panicked desire to wrest victory from the arms of defeat. An obsession to make myself proud by making my professional life something to be proud of.
The fearful is the inability to know what my constitution truly is. How much abuse can I take.
Am I Keith Richards, or some wussy boy who has exacted too high a toll on his body already?
Keef leads to more decades to establish myself. Wussy boy leads to an intimate relationship with hospital beds.
There is no way to know.
There was a definite feeling of discomfort when I put down Mortality. A voice in the head.
A starters gun going off compelling me to pick up the pace.
That's all I got for now.
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