PrintSpectator editorial page editor Raphael Pope-Sussman, a junior in CC, took a leave of absence this semester to undergo chemotherapy. He regularly blogs about his experience at The Audacity of Pope. Below is a modified version of one of his posts.
I woke up in the morning with a splitting headache. During chemotherapy you’re not allowed to take painkillers, so I was forced to make do with more antiquated forms of medicine. I tried applying various poultices to my head, but to no avail. Like a pesky acquaintance who stops by unannounced, the pain would not leave.
Then, as I sat in the living room with my eyes closed, the proverbial heavens opened, unleashing a searing bolt upon my tender pate. Now, I’ll admit that I can be hyperbolic (I come from a long line of conic sections), but I’m not exaggerating when I say this headache was by a wide margin the most intensely excruciating sensation of my life to that point. I literally (and by literally, I mean figuratively) felt like my head was a 10-penny nail under the unrelenting sledge of a wrathful blacksmith. Also, the blacksmith was kicking me in the face. And bludgeoning me with his bellows for good measure.
The slightest ray of light was blinding, so my friend Ben Kurland rigged up an impromptu sunlight-abatement system in my window using towels and cardboard. As I lay in the pitch blackness of my bedroom, I tried to block out the torrent of information streaming in through my inflamed senses. The roughness of a hand on my shoulder, the padding of feet on old oak floorboards, the halo of light that creeps around a door ajar: Every stimulus was magnified 10-thousand-fold.
Then, in an instant, all was still. I leapt to my feet, sprinted to the bathroom, and triumphantly emptied my entire stomach into the toilet bowl.
After retching for a few minutes, I slumped against the porcelain throne, deeply inhaling the chilly air, sweat beaded on my forehead. And the headache, broken momentarily by the paroxysm of reverse peristalsis, once again swept over me.
If I’d had my druthers (I usually do, but on that morning I’d already thrown them up), I would have just stayed in bed. But I had to go to the hospital for hydration—doctor’s orders. I dragged myself out of bed and into my dad’s car. Ben and my mom sat in the back.
Have you ever been on one of those long and magical car rides in which you roll down the windows and feel the crisp air rushing across your cheek and you’re totally—nay, perfectly—free?
This was not one of those car rides. Within two blocks, I had to ask my dad to pull over so I could retch into my bucket without the added annoyance of the car’s rocking.
When we stopped, we still had all the windows closed. This was good, because, as you know, windows keep out noise from the outside world. But as you also know, windows keep in the noise inside the car. The sound of vomiting is always delightful, but you have not heard vomiting until you’ve heard it inside a car with the windows up. This is the kind of noise that could tear flesh.
I didn’t want to hear all the honking and beeping of a New York City street (and, of course, we were parked at the corner where the entire fleet of the FDNY was holding what appeared to be an impromptu siren wail-off), but it was the lesser of two evils, so I asked my dad to put all the windows down.
Besides making for a deeply unsettling noise for everyone in the car, the retching was sending such intense convulsions over my body that my vision blurred. I didn’t see how I was going to make it to Manhattan in this condition. I’m still not sure how I held it together. I guess I instinctively understood that as bad as I was feeling, it was nothing compared to having to sit in the emergency room of my local hospital. So, like the proud family in the Oregon Trail, we pushed onward. It felt like our pace was grueling, but in reality it was probably more like strenuous. There were no rations, which was probably for the best, because if there had been, I would have thrown them up as well. Also, we took the tunnel instead of fording the East River.
In the East Village, we pulled over for the fourth time, and I returned to my retching.
Remember earlier, when I called my headache the “most intensely excruciating sensation of my life to that point”? Well, this was way worse. I retched and retched and retched. Even though my stomach had already, like some sort of Cold War-era public school, been summarily evacuated, I was still bringing up fluid. It was mostly spit. I retched some more.
The spit had blood in it. The blood was from my throat, its soft tissue flayed by the unceasing spasticity of the retching.
When the retching finally subsided, I sat back in my seat and inhaled. Then I dumped my bucket out the window.
We drove the final 50 blocks to the hospital, and I hopped out of the car. My headache was a shadow of itself and I was done vomiting for the day. That was it.
But before I conclude, I wanted to share a few thoughts I’ve had about my little odyssey. I survived physical pain far worse than I could have ever imagined before. But I’d reject the use of the words “heroic” or “courageous” (or even “bodacious”) to describe how I dealt with that pain. As I sat in the car on First Avenue, praying for a moment’s reprieve from my retching, I was doing what anyone would do in that situation: namely, vomiting my guts out. Vomiting, as you know, is an uncontrollable impulse, like sneezing. I had no choice in the matter.
We often speak of the “courage” of suffering. But when we do so, we infuse virtuousness into an experience that doesn’t have moral valence. Courage is about choices. It means choosing—to paraphrase the late Albus Dumbledore—what is right over what is easy. It means choosing the higher ground over the lower.
Suffering is not a choice. It’s just something that happens to people. Our value as humans is in the choices we make every day. It’s through those choices that heroes make themselves. To be sick is to experience one of life’s many turns of fortune. To choose decency and dignity, in good health and bad, is the true test of character. Taking suffering in stride requires fortitude. But there’s far more courage in reaching out to those who are themselves suffering. That’s a true mitzvah.
Or, as a wise member of the Yiddishkeit might say (and by “might,” I mean, “might if I say he might”), “courage schmorage.” I’ll leave the bravery to someone else and stick to what I do best. Which is, of course, vomiting and then writing about it.
The journey to the hospital was a hell of an experience (also a hellish experience). But I made it there in one piece. And I’m proud of that. Not because it was an act—or even a question—of courage, but because when times are tough, there’s pride in just surviving. As I said, it’s not like there were other options. There was really only a story to be had.