Most of my life, even when I was a young kid, I never cared much about my birthday. I attributed that in part to the fact that, falling close to Thanksgiving, my birthday was always second fiddle (even in my mind) to the bigger holiday.
This year, though, my birthday feels more significant. Probably because, but for the miracles of modern medicine, I wouldn’t have had this birthday, and even with the miracles of modern medicine, it’s completely unknowable how many birthdays I have left. Could be a few, could be a lot, could be something in between. Generally my strategy is to ignore that unknowable, but I can’t always keep it from popping into my head.
I’m grateful to be alive, and during my last year — which included the start of my ‘real’ retirement — I did a lot: Spent 11 weeks in France; moved from Santa Rosa to a rental house in Berkeley; took a four-week road trip back to the Midwest; bought a house in Kensington and moved a second time; continued to bicycle and hike; indulged my sport-crazy half (quarter?) by attending many college and pro sporting events; learned two new programming languages, Clojure and Julia (the former following dabbling in the challenging LISP-languages SBCL and Racket); and visited various museums and events. Trying to live as full a life as possible.
But in all this goodness, there’s a difficulty. I have to take a chemotherapy drug called Revlimid daily as a maintenance treatment to keep the multiple myeloma at bay. The studies show that it is effective, but it has a damnable side effect: It makes me feel tired and slow all the time, and at irregular intervals it knocks me down completely. It affects my sleep and my appetite. It makes me feel not-myself. It makes me feel diminished, it makes me think of myself as diminished. My verve and zest are depressed, and I didn’t have a high level of verve and zest to begin with. I don’t have the same oomph, the same get-up-and-get-at-’em drive as before. It’s tempting to stop taking it, or reduce the dose, and I’ve done both of those for short periods (and felt great), but in the end the prospect of living longer wins out. But feeling so different, so less, is hard to take.
I hear the chorus saying, waah waah boo hoo OK Boomer you entitled snowflake stop complaining, you have it better than most. True enough, mostly I got it good, including the most important thing, the best wife in the world; not a day goes by that I’m not thankful for her being in my life.
Even with all the difficulties, I’m grateful.
So Happy Birthday to me. Many thanks to everyone who sent me birthday wishes, I appreciated each one, and hope each of you will be thankful tomorrow for all that you have.
Me, I’m looking forward to a great 63rd year. Tune in next November 26 to see how it went.
Categories: SSS Health