I am normally only a moderately emotional person with my reactions. That is not to say that I cannot get somewhat seriously engaged in a discussion on certain topics. But generally strong emotional response is not an immediate reaction to hearing or seeing an event or being told of some news. Perhaps it is the scientific training, perhaps it is being male, perhaps is comes from growing up in the presence of a very formal British gentleman (my paternal grandfather - who was actually raised in Northeastern Ireland, but was “English to the backbone”), who knows why. It is just the way I am. Upon seeing a crisis event, I am more analytical, observing. Any sense of emotion that I might feel tends to come upon me well after the event.
This has even been true when faced with having to deal with traumatic personal health crises. The two most extreme were when I was told that I had lymphoma and when my heart value had failed. In both cases, I was rather calm in what my response was what the treatment was going to be. As serious as the situations were, I had no thought of anything other than successfully navigating the treatment. Thinking about these times now, this is somewhat surprising for someone who normally considers all possible outcomes. I guess that outcome was the only one that really mattered to me.
So what I find very surprising is that there are a few words or phrases that do evoke strong, irrational responses in me. Part of my treatment for lymphoma was rather extensive radiation therapy. I was treated in 1975. This was before most of the imaging techniques available today. So it was much more difficult to pinpoint the exact limits of the spread of the disease. Further, radiation therapy was not as well-developed as today. So treatment tended to cover much more of the body and was generally of a much higher dose that might be experienced today. I had what was called total-nodal treatment. I was given gamma radiation doses between 25 Grays in my abdomen to 40 Grays in my upper chest and neck. That is a whole bunch. But I am here to complain about it, so don’t feel too sorry for me. I received this total dosage over a 14 week period. It is totally painless while you get it. You get kind of strange looks walking around with the war paint markings on your chin. Makes you puke your guts out later along with other side effects. You get through it. All this was thirty-five years ago. But to this day, I still feel a cringe when I hear that someone is going to have radiation therapy. I know that the techniques today are much better controlled. I know that there are beam techniques that allow much better locating of the radiation to specific sites. I know that much more is known about effective dose rates. I know that no matter how difficult it was for me, I am still here after thirty-five years and I have absolutely no reason to react at all to these two simple words. But I do. Somewhere deep down in the neurons that make up me there is buried a pattern that matches to the sound of “radiation therapy” and this pattern connects to a whole chain of experiences that must give my body the same feeling that my ape ancestors had when that nasty feline got a little too close. I cannot run very fast anymore, so I think I will go climb a tree.
Is Still Here
Your frank appraisal of your emotional response or lack there of, is a comment in and of itself. It must have been a truly staggeringly horrible experience for you to have this response 35 years later.
Healing from a significant health crisis involves much more than the human body, and for me, goes on through the rest of one’s life. I would expect that you will have this knee-jerk reaction to “radiation treatment” for many, many, many more wonderfully HEALTHY years to come!
Thank you for your supporting comment. But I cannot help feeling a little silly for the cringe. After all, “radiation treatment” saved my life. But then, we human do sometimes have trouble admitting that we are animals and react like animals.