I've also been asked to elaborate on some of the things I've implanted in my brain as it relates to the ficticious characters operating there and the sometimes perverted comrades who are part of my Army.
So, in pursuit of that, let me say a couple of things about "perception" and positive mental attitude.
I couldn't do anything about the dosages, the malignancy, the trauma to the brain and head, and a long list of other stuff that's totally out of my control. I did however, accept them and began to plan a strategy to deal with them.
Almost to a man, everybody at the hospital continued to tell me that a positive mental attitude is 65% of the job. They explained things like the effect that laughter has on brain chemestry and how many more muscles it takes to frown than to smile.
When they did that, I began to view my body as "The Country" and my cell structure as my "Armed Citizenry".
I brought in the close air support pilot, the gunship pilot and the scout pilot that still lives inside me everyday.
I removed the politicians and all the rules of engagement that we were forced to live under and then instructed the Commanding Officer (me) that there were no rules at all except those that were made by me. The rule then became "There are no rules".
Next, I started to mentally associate with the likes of John Wayne, Kirk Douglas, Bruce Willis and Arnold Swartzennegger or however you spell that. I added some Lone Ranger, Brad Pitt, the Basterds, and some other individuals that you could say were "shoot now and ask questions later" kind of people.
The more I added to my Army, the better I liked it, the better I began to feel. I began to tell the gang at radiation that "the reason you see my finger moving on the hand ring I hold on to while I'm being radiated is because I'm pulling the trigger on the minigun I had in 70 and 71.
By the time I finished fabricating all these warriors and cancer cell serial killers, my brain chemestry was right where I wanted it to be.
It's nothing at all for me to have these visions of tracers flying into the backs of each cancer cell and watching each cell grab for it's back as it falls to the floor, grave yard dead. I always said that shooting a guy in the back, a guy that is trying to kill you, is the absolute best policy.
It removed any possibility of him getting a shot off at you and killing one of the crew members that you were responsible for. I never lost one single crew member and in fact, never even had one wounded. Back shot, it's the ONLY way to go.
My Army wanted a body count so I met with Waylon and the gals and asked about it. We received the formula for figuring all that out but I never actually ran the numbers because we were told it was almost two million cells that we'd killed up to that point.
When I'm asked "how are the treatments going", I think of the Army, the body count, the guys I have in my corner who often times say "Load 100% tracer rounds and burn their asses up" and I simply say that they're going great.
All of these things either add up to "craziness on my end of things" or an uncanny ability to make mind over matter work for me, my brain chemestry, my mental attitude about all this and the day to day battle that has to be faced without depression or even concern.
I even created an alter ego that would become a "ghost" in the event that I died in the first 90 days after surgery. I'm sure there are some folks out there that would NOT want the ghost of T L Butler to come for a visit. The more I thought about that, the more I laughed and the more postive brain chemesty I created. Think about that for a minute. You upset about anything going on in the country right now? Poof, just like Samantha on Bewitched, you could just wrinkle your nose and arrive at any given place to do your ghostly duty. Yeah, I liked it alot.
After I put all of these characters in place I had to tell everybody that my perspective about life and it's priorities had totally changed. I let everybody know that negative things simply weren't allowed to exist in my environment and to violate that mandate would be met swiftly by me and my new rule book regardless of who you were. I just don't allow it. Make sure you eliminate everything of a negative nature.
Something like that is hard for a family to swallow until they stop a minute and try to gain a different thought process by putting themselves in my position or the position of their family member. It's really hard for folks to try and tell you how they would feel if they had malignant brain cancer. Kinda like a woman having a baby. No way for a guy to know.
In any event, my group has stood up to the plate and actually become part of that Army of crazy people who participate in the malignant cell serial killin part of the job. Look at some of Joey's posts and you'll see what I mean. He's just as much of a sicko as anybody is, he just knows how to portray it better by computer.
On the other side of the page there are those who are not so crazy.
They run prayer groups and continue to do follow ups regarding that. My brother is in a prayer group that sent me a "prayer blanket" with my name on it. There are employers, family, friends, neighbors, old high school buddies and even an ex wife who offfered a spare room to recover from surgery.
I mean, my support group is bad to the bone and they've made it happen for me. They will do it for you too if you can get everybody on the same page, a page that is almost certainly unlike any page you've ever been on before.
When you add all that up, it totally eliminates the small stuff that you really do have control over. Make Stan or anybody in this same position, as comfortable as humanly possible.
That's what Kristin and Tim Jr did for me and I want for nothing, I have everything and of everything I have, if I want to change it, all I have to do is say I want it changed. I'm totally comfortable and that takes away from the somewhat infrequent problems you have with chemo and radiation. Don't have any problems with chemo any more and only fatigue from radiation. It's not a big deal when you have HD tv, a boston cream pie in the refrigerator and a support group as big as mine.
I guess that's going to be all for now. I know this sounds a little crazy to some of you but I guarantee you, it's not about the things that sound crazy, it's about the things that work and don't work. Do the math, you'll see what I mean and probably be shocked at how little effort it took to hit that level of comfort that makes everything so much easier to endure.
Thanks to my support group again!!!!
Sr.
No comments:
Post a Comment