Warming the engine/Thank god for Oliver Sacks

For a while now I've been scribbling notes and spending long hours before sleep and short minutes before getting out of bed figuring on how I will tell the story of my absence. Where I've been (literal and figurative).I'm not consuming much fiction these days, but can slide through clinical tales like a hot knife through butter. So to warm me up a bit, and to remind you that I still think and breathe, I'll share a passage from the late Oliver Sacks' book The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat (from the introduction, Losses):

...But it must be said from the outset that a disease is never a mere loss or excess--that there is always a reaction, on the part of the affected organism or individual, to restore, to replace, to compensate for and to preserve its identity, however strange the means may be: and to study or influence these means, no less than the primary insult to the nervous system, is an essential part of our role as physicians.

This is a perfect prologue. You know I had cancer. And that is the least interesting part of the story I wish to tell. The compensating, the strange and destructive means by which I strive and fail to preserve my identity is where the drama lies. And that, my friends, was completely overlooked by both me (RN) and all of my care providers.Where is Oliver Sacks when you need him? In print I suppose. Thank god.