As human beings, we learn by observing the fates of other human beings.
When we encounter a fate that is easily recognized, and assuredly an unenviable fate, there is no ambient curiosity gifted to us by our ignorance. We've seen this movie before, and we know how it ends.
The normal psychological response to this sort of thing most certainly is not: wash. rinse. repeat.
You can't spend too much time on the frontlines in a pitched battle like cancer, and find yourself filled with a burning desire to experience the struggle first-hand. Jack Kevorkian's form of therapy isn't the greatest idea ever conceived, but for special circumstances, it might sometimes apply. One critical detail of supreme importance, to keep in mind: As a permanent decision, it should never be applied to temporary circumstances.
Within the specific context of this anecdote, and the benefit of the author's recall serving us as hindsight, I think, the moment when he noticed the sclera icterus was late in the game, but a conscionable moment for non-theraputic intervention. Arguably, she had already passed her own threshold moment, when she started eating oxies like candy, and wryly deflating strangers attitudes with a malign gallows humor about the fact that her apparent pregnancy was actually a side-effect of terminal liver failure.
I really don't agree at all, based on my own experiences (personal, though they may be, and with absolutely no desire to be a snarky contrarian). Depression has been all but numbness to me.
Deep seated regret. The aftermath of an anxiety realized. The period after my worst fears come to life. Isolation. Abandonment. Powerlessness. Set adrift in an ocean of problems no one created, and no one can solve, never to return, never to set foot on dry land again. Perhaps with a meager ration of hope, that looks like it's going to burn off in the blistering sunlight of ordinary day-to-day struggles, amidst the windless doldrums of routine, before a sea of bad luck swallows me whole.
The way out is through, though we don't always make it home to normalcy in one peice.
You know what I recently observed? A bunch of kindergarteners fastening their shoes to their feet with velcro straps.
Their shoes also had little blinky lights on them, so that cars don't run them over, when they chase a soccer ball into the street. Let make all the adults wear velcro shoes with blinky lights on them too.
When we encounter a fate that is easily recognized, and assuredly an unenviable fate, there is no ambient curiosity gifted to us by our ignorance. We've seen this movie before, and we know how it ends.
The normal psychological response to this sort of thing most certainly is not: wash. rinse. repeat.
You can't spend too much time on the frontlines in a pitched battle like cancer, and find yourself filled with a burning desire to experience the struggle first-hand. Jack Kevorkian's form of therapy isn't the greatest idea ever conceived, but for special circumstances, it might sometimes apply. One critical detail of supreme importance, to keep in mind: As a permanent decision, it should never be applied to temporary circumstances.
Within the specific context of this anecdote, and the benefit of the author's recall serving us as hindsight, I think, the moment when he noticed the sclera icterus was late in the game, but a conscionable moment for non-theraputic intervention. Arguably, she had already passed her own threshold moment, when she started eating oxies like candy, and wryly deflating strangers attitudes with a malign gallows humor about the fact that her apparent pregnancy was actually a side-effect of terminal liver failure.