Ouch, My Head

Finished teaching last week and it left me as big finishes usually do – lost. I had gotten so used to being stressed out and unhappy that my class finished and I went on feeling stressed, but about very minor things. I finally had to realize I need to take a step back from what has been going on for the past month.

After worrying myself sick about cancer for the past six weeks I am trying to take a new direction. You can’t go through life like George Costanza when something terrible is actually happening to you. You’ll go psychotic. So I’m trying to be more zen like about it all, but there is also a pressure to move in this direction. If you get cancer you are supposed to awaken spiritually, count your blessings and become a better person. It is bullshit, but I still feel like I’m supposed to be different now. I suppose I am just lazy.

However, I am trying to move in a direction that at least says “I treated cancer” instead of “my god, I have cancer.” Probably an important distinction and it at least allows me not to panic all day long.

Now I can go back to panicking about my work. I submitted my paper to both my supervisor and his partner and they both proclaimed it wonderful. I think maybe they were just feeling bad for me. My supervisor said congratulations because apparently the first draft was so awful and he never believed it could be whipped into shape. Were they just being nice because they thought I was down? I don’t know. Anyways, my paper is off to the conference. The other papers on my panel read like economics textbooks. I am the wrong type of leftist maybe because I don’t understand a goddamn thing. But part of me also thinks that I’m not this stupid. Maybe I’m the wrong type of leftist. Anyways, I will show up again and do my little song and dance and then skulk away uncomfortably. It is my niche.

I have been at home all week recovering from the loss of my left testicle (both physically and psychologically.) I hear Lance Armstrong was given a prosthetic one (he would) but I don’t think I’ll go that route. Seems like vanity at this stage would court further disaster! 

Through the general fatigue I am trying to get through my paper for the BIG American Conference I am going to. I don’t really know if it is that big or not, but my supervisor has given me the impression that I would be well advised not to fuck up or litter my submission with careless vocabulary. How do I know what these Americans want from me? I’m bound to transgress some cultural sensitivity of the American Left and be blacklisted forever. Not that it matters because I don’t think American universities are hiring many Canadianists these days. 

In any case, paper revisions are going slow because I am generally feeling tired and sorry for myself. I wrote to the conference people and begged for another week to submit and they never replied. Maybe I am blacklisted already. 

And now I am listening to early Led Zeppelin and thinking that it sounds like music made on another planet. It is 40 years old, but it doesn’t sound old. It also doesn’t sound current – just otherworldly. Good music for matching my otherworldly mood!

Since I returned from conference number one everything has gone a little bit haywire. 

I had an ultrasound done in June which turned up three tumorous masses in my left testicle. This is somewhat ironic because I have always feared testicular cancer in a big way. So much so that my girlfriend couldn’t even take it seriously when I started telling her I was having some pain “down there” and thought I should see a doctor. I don’t really blame her. 

So there was some wrangling with the stupid medical system and I was originally given an appointment weeks in the future. This was all accelerated when I went to the hospital on the recommendation of a friend of my parents’. She sent me to the urologist on-call and he admitted me right away for surgery. This was good because I didn’t have the chance to freak-the-fuck-out about preparing to lose my testicle. 

Three hours later I was being wheeled into surgery. And then I spent the weekend in the hospital and at home recovering. Now I am freaking out about the fact that I had to cancel a whole week of classes and I need to both return to my article to get it done by the 1st of August and somehow be ready to teach again next week. 

I think losing a nut will only get you so much sympathy around a history department. In any case, I’m waiting to see if the tumors they removed are cancerous or not. I am prepared to face it down if they are. It’s therapeutic to say “fuck cancer.” What else can you do?