Runnin’ by David Dallas invigorates my earlobes, a horizon of open road immersed in bush is in my view as my calves pound tarseal roads. My RunKeeper activity interrupts the tracks motion, time 33 minutes, distance 6.8 kilometres, average pace 4.54 minutes per kilometre. A smirk of achievement overcomes me.
At this moment, I’m in control. Out here on this open road, I’m winning, I’m strong, and I’m a man with the stamina to punch another 4 kilometres of open road and beat another personal running best. I reach the summit of a hill peak, and the Melbourne cityscape engulfs my vision, I capture an Instagram photographic souvenir. From one photo post, three of my social networks will see the view in front of me right now. Some may regret not completing a run themselves this morning, others may yearn to travel somewhere beyond their current destination, and some may just see it as another piece of social spam clogging up their news feed.
What they won’t see is the moments after the flash. The loud scream I shout at the infinite abyss in front of me that is invisible to the world but two metres ahead of every stride I take. It’s not easy projecting an image of wellness to the world. Being Bruce Wayne by day and the Dark Knight behind closed doors is a tough disguise to maintain. But accepting a life-changing illness does fuel you with the drive to make every today more successful tomorrow.
When we get diagnosed with a life-changing illness, we are no longer the epitome of strength that we once were. Men handle illness differently that woman, historically we’ve been portrayed as the stronger gender, but in all honesty, females have a stronger sense of acceptance when it comes to accepting illness. They will share their diagnosis, they will process it faster and they won’t hide it from view in their own internal Gotham like we do.
As children, we relate to Batman more than any other superhero, and as men, this affiliation with the Dark Knight only grows. He’s human by day with an alter ego by night; his alter ego is flawed, and it features a darkness that he continues to battle every day. Getting diagnosed with a life-changing medical illness whether it’s cancer, diabetes, Crohn’s disease, a sexually transmitted disease or renal failure. Can often feel like our personal arch-nemesis and our journey towards battling this villain is one that many of us choose to complete alone, to avoid burdening those that we love with the strains of our diagnosis.
Whether you’ve survived a life-changing illness, just been diagnosed with one or have accepted and embraced your medical diagnosis as a part of you, but not a limitation of your existence. How you acknowledged your illness and what it means to your daily life is unique to you and you alone. We all undergo, slur and endure a similar set of sonnets before coming full circle and living beyond our diagnosis.
This blog won’t be a solution to you or your loved one’s diagnosis. But it has been crafted to help those who are suffering in silence like I once was before I shared my life-changing diagnosis with those that love me for me.
Tap ⬆️ to listen to Once In A Lifetime by Talking Heads while you 📖 🎧.
Sometimes our biggest fear isn’t necessarily the illness itself but our battle with our perception of who we were before the diagnosis became a part of our life. Before the medication, before the blood tests, before the lifestyle adjustments, before our health was a daily concern of our being. We will think we were stronger before this. Believe we could do more before this and remember that waking up feeling this bad after a night out didn’t happen when we were well.
We will be walking to get takeaways and pass a chic modern furniture store window display and wonder if we will live long enough to set that scene with a partner and family that we love. A scene will unfold before our eyes on a train of a father and son experiencing their first train ride together. Then our gut will sink and churn as we internalise over the possibility of this experience not being a reality for ourselves. Everything and anything that once was meaningless before being diagnosed and was infinitely possible before our illness, becomes marinated with the thoughts of will I or won’t I and where does possibility lie beyond this disease?
While every possible fear that you experience, every limitation you uncover post diagnosis is valid and needs to be processed for you to move forward. Eventually, you will realise that living and living life to the fullest, as you complete what you want to achieve in this lifetime, far outweighs the limitations of this prognosis.
Tap ⬆️ to listen to Hurt by Johnny Cash while you 📖 🎧.
The realisation that the life which we once lived must change and the fear of the unknown, can fuck with our head, body and well-being. Whisky hues, cocaine highs, never-ending blunts and living life on the verge as destructively as we possibly can to feel alive is essential.
No man is an island, but no disease is accepted with assured consciousness either. Its fought and numbed with anything we can find to forget that it’s going to change our lives forever. Masking our illness and wearing a mask of moderately destructive behaviour is fine initially. In all honesty, it’s a natural process that no matter how bad it may become needs to be experienced for you to move forward in your acceptance of your new found health ailments.
However, once you realise that no drug, no escape or no act of fearlessness is going to alleviate this diagnosis from your life permanently and that the only person who you’re hurting is you, it will hurt. You’ll become more and more attuned to every reality of the now, and it will be a constant continuum of feeling confident in overcoming this illness and then feeling defeated by your diagnosis again and again.
The highs and lows of surviving a life-changing illness are more manic than a Paula Abdul interview, but by enduring every high and low, unconsciously you are building resilience within yourself. One that will allow you to move past viewing your illness as a burden and enable you to reflectively see that from your illness you have actually become a better human.
Tap ⬆️ to listen to Limit to Your Love by James Blake while you 📖 🎧.
When it comes to love and an unexpected illness, all that once was becomes a series of blurred lines. Whether you’re in a committed relationship, single, have a wealth of friends or are incredibly close to your family. Post-diagnosis your relationships are going to change.
People’s perception of you doesn’t change, in fact, all they want to do is help you and get you through this. However, your relationships will be different. They will not change because of others, but they will change because you’ll create distance. You’ll choose not to disclose every detail about your health, and you’ll assume that a life without burdening others who love you with your ailments is the right decision for everyone.
If you’re single, you’ll remember waking up next to someone, someone you once loved and you’ll fear that you may never wake up every day with someone you love and in their embrace again. The fear will bloom because like it or not once they know that you may not be around forever you’re limiting their perception of love and the possibility of you both working as a couple. So instead you’ll choose to sabotage every potential relationship and boot possible lovers out of your bed when things begin to get too frequently intimate. You’ll do this out of fear and a desire not to burden them with your uncertain future.
The same formula will apply to your friends and family. You’ll assume they have problems of their own and you deflecting every health concern you overcome in your journey towards wellness or living post diagnosis will burden them too. So you’ll choose to survive as a lone wolf, even though, all of these people would be at your side every step of the way if only you had the balls to tell them what’s going on.
You are not who you once were, and your life will never be exactly how it once was, but part of accepting an illness is knowing that your disease is only a burden on you and you alone. Your friends, your partner and your family love you for you and want you to be in their lives for as long as possible, so if you need to, talk to them. If you need them to distract you from your health concerns or if you need them to cook for you for a night, all, you have to do is ask. After all even Batman had Alfred and Robin by his side in times of despair.
Tap ⬆️ to listen to Blood Bank by Bon Iver while you 📖 🎧.
No matter our diagnosis terminal or temporary, we all battle a war against our treatment every day. We loathe the medication and the fact that we have to take it, and we hate the side effects too. But then we also acquire a strange affiliation for the place where we began to seek treatment or continue to seek treatment for our illness, no matter how frequent or infrequent our visits to this place may become.
In those hospital wards, we feel a strange sort of comfort. Amongst those doctors, nurses and specialists we feel at home. Sometimes we’ll even find ourselves going to the park opposite that hospital when our diagnosis gets the better of us, and we need comfort to ease the thoughts that are overcoming us. Instead of sharing them with those that love us. We’ll just sit there watching the motions of that hospital unfold; we’ll see people like us surrounding it. The sterile building filled with happiness, sorrow and fear will strangely comfort us more than the company of friends because here no judgement is cast upon us. In this place, us talking freely about every detail of our illness is not burdening anybody else, and within these walls we are safe.
We are fortunate enough to be living in the information age, a time where support groups for every diagnosis possible exist and are accessible via a keyboard or mobile phone. These networks make us feel safe; they allow us to share freely about our diagnosis and from our peers within these spaces, we find support from individuals scattered around the globe. People who are living with our diagnosis and that we can share our feelings with, without having to expose our suffering to our immediate circles.
Treatment can come in many forms. Medicine can be the perfect sling for some, talking with others is the ideal remedy for some too, and sometimes space is all we need to alleviate the pain of our diagnosis. However, whatever our solution is, we must remember to keep using it to remain well.
Tap ⬆️ to listen to Perfect Day by Lou Reid while you 📖 🎧.
There will be times when everybody’s problems seem more menial and trivial. Hearing friends stressing about weddings, bitching about relationships, and fearing they will remain single forever, will make you want to scream “Fuck try just trying to keep alive”. There will be other times when you dwell on what you can’t eat, what you can’t enjoy and when you feel that you’re a shell of your former self due to your health.
Though shifts in perception will happen, you will begin to appreciate your illness; you’ll start to see that the lifestyle changes you’ve had to make due to it have actually improved your overall well-being and outlook. Every day will somehow just become a perfect day, well maybe not every day, but you will start to see the glimmers of hope, the beauty of life that comes in fleeting moments with more resonance. You’ll appreciate people, places, sensations and experiences more and more because you’re just happy to be experiencing them and ecstatic that you’re not be impacted by your health in these moments.
Those of us who are unwell. Those of us who have had to accept an illness as part of our daily life become a Lester Burnham from American Beauty type of antihero. We objectively look at the world with a detached acceptance of the beauty of every day and feel fortunate to get to appreciate this for a lot longer than others. Bad days still will resurface, and we will have troughs and lows. But from medical misfortune, we do find a greater awareness of who we are. We know where we want to get to in this lifetime and who we want to be by our side for as long as is humanly possible.
It’s a lonely place living with an illness; you don’t want to burden others, but it is a burden that we have to live with and will live with for the rest of our lives. It becomes manageable, but we will always look at those with trivial problems and a healthier existence than us, with a glare of cynicism, because they don’t know how lucky they are. Eventually, you’ll also smile, a smile as bright as the 5-year-old San Francisco Leukaemia sufferer did the day he became Bat Kid for twenty-four hours and became a superhero of his own. The smile will come from the realisation that you’re living a healthier life than you once did pre-diagnosis. It will come from your newfound drive to live and achieve more and make every ambition you have possible.
If all we breathe is our illness, if all we feel is our resentment for our diagnosis. If the limitations outweigh the possibilities and if the burden that our illness has placed on our existence is something that we dwell on. Then we’re not living. After all living scared is wasting time, but a fearless sense of inspiration, well that will leave you fulfilled once it’s gone.
Written by Samuel Elliot Snowden
To show your support for men’s health and stop men dying too young, please donate to my MoSpace via the link below!
https://mobro.co/samuelelliotsnowden?mc=1
EXPERIENTIAL AROUSAL 