First, let me apologize to Sue, Kim and Ashley who had previously left comments on some of my posts. I am still relatively new to website building and all that, so I must have messed something up with the commenting feature. I spent several hours trying to fix it, with limited success. I ended up having the comments manually added back to the respective posts under my alias. Again, I’m sorry for that! I hope that from now on everything will work smoothly.
Secondly, I’d like to congratulate our friend Jay for joining our Kidney Cancer Blogging World and starting his own website: http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/jayz

Unfortunately, Dr. Badani didn’t call yesterday to let me know what he thinks about my CT-Scan Slides and if he feels that part of the kidney can be saved, or we indeed need to proceed with the removal of the entire organ. I hope I will have a chance to talk to him tomorrow.
When I received my kidney cancer diagnosis a few weeks back ago, a feeling of peace emerged from inside of me. The world and people around me were concerned and scared, while I encountered an unexplainable sensation of inner peace and freedom. Something I never had before. I’m known to be a worrier, even the celebrant who married me to my wife Ann had to point that out during our wedding procedure. And yet, after I was told that I had cancer, it felt that the weight of the world has been lifted off of my shoulders.
But this feeling is GONE. Unfortunately. I’m back into my world of self induced stress and woe. The world I don’t like, the world I never liked. How do I get out of here? Why was I given the opportunity to experience freedom and peace for a little while and why did that subside for no apparent reason? Guilt has been a formidable motivator for me all throughout my live. I don’t know whether this is particularly a German thing; well, probably not, even though I have to say that there are quite a few cultural differences between the States and Germany, one of which manifests in the way children are being either en- or discouraged for their behavior. It appears to me that the notion of “positive reinforcement” is much more popular here in the States, whereas pointing at someone’s mistakes or missteps might be more engraved in German tradition.
But with all the undeniable advantages that come along with a good share of guilt, it demands its toll on you. Nobody wants to feel guilty. Hence most people try to resolve the problem in one way or another just to get rid of it.
And now picture a person whose guilt is exponentially high – that would be me. So here I am, feeling guilty constantly all of the time and over things a ‘normal’ person wouldn’t even shed a thought about. To give you an example: I went to Home-Depot to get patio stones and masonry materials, etc. So I shifted about 310 of the patio stones from the pallet onto my cart, paid for everything, went to my car, loaded everything into my trunk and realized that my stone count was off by 4 stones. I went back to the register and told them about my mistake and that I’d like to pay for the four stones. The person at the register looked at me like he had just seen a ghost. He then charged me another $ 0.92 and with paying the balance, I also got rid of my guilt. At least for a few minutes. And this is not about being a good or bad person. Home-Depot would have probably survived the loss of $ 0.92, and God wouldn’t have told me to go straight to hell on my judgment day for something like that. No, what I am talking about is an entirely human invention; it’s the power of guilt.
What does anything of that has to do with my kidney cancer you may rightfully ask yourself. Well, let me tell you: A LOT, actually. My guilt doesn’t let me entitle myself  clinging on to that comfort of not to worry. Intellectually, my cancer doesn’t scare me, yet. That might change at some point, I don’t know. But for some reason, after this short period of complete worriless lightness and comfortable peace, my old companion ‘guilt’ caught up with me again.
I didn’t mean to come across depressed. I am not. It is just an interesting dynamic I noticed on myself and I wanted to share this with you.

 

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