Tumor In My Eye

So that jelly in my right eye that grew in blurriness? turned out to be a tumor. Choroidal melanoma, distorting the retina, and right next to the optic nerve.

I joked, when I first had vision problems, that my right eye didn't like me and was trying to kill me. My right eye is trying to kill me.  My right eye has gone all selfish and right wing and wants to kill me.

Put another way, be careful what you joke about. The universe always provides a punchline. I joked as to how my 7th decade was going to kill me, and the punchline is cancer.

in the picture above, the top row shows the choroidal melanoma about 11mm in diameter, a pea sized horrid little thing looking out for only itself. Plan A, always the first  course of action, is for the whole eye is gotta come out.

Told this news, idiot that I am, I immediately started thinking about cool glass eyes. Eight Ball. Infinity. Cat's Eye. Maybe LED lights. Animated eyeball. Better still, an LED flashlight in my right eye. And also a laser if they can. Bluetooth with a wristwatch controller for Bionic Johnny. Laser Jack. (No, I'm not a Jack. I tried it. Didn't work. I'm on the Johnny end of the spectrum).

Anyway, since then I received a body scan, and I am cancer free everywhere else. Which is good, yay. Normally this thing in my eyeball would have spread from the lungs or the colon.

Honestly I expected that I am otherwise cancer free since I not only feel well, but feel silverback well, strong and powerful for someone my age. Of course, 35 years of heavy smoking and 45 years of boozing still give me a hefty chance for future cancers, but so far so good.

It's a melanoma. If it were on my arm they'd excise it and a chunk of surrounding skin, and off I'd go. Ah, but I got a squamous hairy mole wart  in the eye, so it's now proton beam therapy. Or we can always go back to Plan A.

Regardless, the vision loss is for good, proton therapy can't make it better. Whether the eye goes or stays, my right field of vision is now a suck of blur. Odds are, though, this health crisis is a speed bump, and viva la 2022 and beyond.

The thing that bothers me is folks are right. Death focuses the mind. There is a lucidity like smoking opium.  Ah, but the mind is a weak thing and that brief glorious moment of possibility worn down by daily living. I can still recapture it, but Nothing Lasts. Unless I come up with controlled nuclear fusion, I am already forgotten. And who cares? I'm not worried about death. I cease to exist. Why am I worried about accomplishing something that will soon be eaten by the vast wastes of the future?

There is the possiblity of me melding into an archetype at least. Think about it. I have a model of you in my mind, more detailed with exposure. Likewise you have me in your head. We metaphorically put pieces of brains in each other, which makes all of us individuals a mosaic anyway. An isolated human, cut off from the monkey hive, quickly ceases to exist. Except for what remains of her or him in the monkey hive. Or a free neutron outside the nucleus.

I've done enough acid to not worry if I cease to exist. Just a spark. Not even a spark compared to the Universe. I am a Planck length. I am on Planck time.