I know just how this guy feels...
That's from a Christopher Hitchens essay about his Cancer diagnosis. Hitchens goes on to say:
The oncology bargain is that, in return for at least the chance of a few more useful years, you agree to submit to chemotherapy and then, if you are lucky with that, to radiation or even surgery. So here’s the wager: you stick around for a bit, but in return we are going to need some things from you. These things may include your taste buds, your ability to concentrate, your ability to digest, and the hair on your head. This certainly appears to be a reasonable trade.
Allow me to inform you, though, that when you sit in a room with a set of other finalists, and kindly people bring a huge transparent bag of poison and plug it into your arm, and you either read or don’t read a book while the venom sack gradually empties itself into your system, the image of the ardent soldier or revolutionary is the very last one that will occur to you. You feel swamped with passivity and impotence: dissolving in powerlessness like a sugar lump in water.
You can read the whole thing here....
http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2010/09/hitchens-201009
Comments
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Wow
What poignancy. I will log on and read the whole thing........
I have just read it and it is amazing. There is humour in there as well as a sadness that we all must have felt at some point.
You all must read it.0 -
Thanks for the report
It will be interesting to follow to see if he accepts the "notion" of God now that he is in the battle. In the past he has been so vocal against a "Higher Power". Most of us in the trenches think that the war would be much harder when alone. Saundra0 -
Excellentsaundra said:Thanks for the report
It will be interesting to follow to see if he accepts the "notion" of God now that he is in the battle. In the past he has been so vocal against a "Higher Power". Most of us in the trenches think that the war would be much harder when alone. Saundra
Well Put Saundra!!!!0
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