Perspectives

What our knowledge has wrought. Dark hints about nothing. There is that double-edged sword of modernity called medicine that offers both salvation and damnation. Of what worth is the next day if our soul — the inner individual — is left questioning the value of it all?

There is no stronger force in nature than the human will to live. Recall the scene in the movie “Schindler’s List” when three Jewish children have been reduced to standing chest deep in the fetid, liquid excrement of a German outhouse. In order to survive for that moment. For a moment.

In another distinct scene, you follow, from a “safe” distance, the black and white film footage of Germans violently rounding up and killing Jews. Periodically you watch as a little girl, innocence dressed in bright red, runs hither and yon, in and out of doorways, trying to escape the Holocaust. You’re aghast at the atrocity, yet you’re hoping against hope that this child will somehow escape her fate. Time passes. Later you see her discarded red outline on a heap of dead bodies. So much for hope.

I’ve read for years that if you live long enough, every man will get prostate disease. Isn’t that a comforting thought, guys? Something is inevitably going to get all of us. And it ain’t the boogeyman. We’re saddled with a body that for thousands of years provided humans a life for about, say, 30 years. In the past, we had a life expectancy half or two-thirds of what we might experience today. There are a number of reasons responsible for today’s human lifespan, and science legitimately gets our grateful tip of the hat for its many contributions.

Ah, but “life” is not content with providing additional years without extracting its proverbial pound of flesh. There is a quid pro quo quality to human existence. What for what? Longer life versus increased uncertainty. In one of today’s enduring ironies, we live longer only to wonder, “Are we but one diagnosis from doom?” Modern medicine is now the sword of Damocles, always hovering. That ache. That cough. That bump. That growth. That fever. That moment of forgetfulness. The doubt. The fear.

I recently had a biopsy, and I will receive (supposedly) the results on Sept. 1. I say supposedly because I am now in the maw of modern medicine where one test leads to another, which in turn leads to yet another doctor and more tests. Ad infinitum. I argued (gently) with one doctor that I did not like the course events were taking. I was told that if I wanted to stay under his care, I had to do exactly as he ordered. I inwardly laughed at this man and silently said, “Jawohl.” And clicked my heels.

Go in for one test and celebrate its results only to find later that, guess what, while eliminating “that” we found “this.” And so it goes.

I was so stoked last week over how the aspiration biopsy went that within minutes of arriving home, I cracked a bottle of champagne. And giggled and laughed at my predicament. Our human condition. All I want is the 22 more years I planned for.

Know what? The Hubble Space Telescope has picked up a distant rumbling from the far recesses of the universe, from the beginnings of time. They’ve determined … it’s a laugh.