Excise tax

Well, my mole biopsy came back and the word is "atypical something or other." Bottom line is that I need to have a bigger chunk o'flesh excised from the same spot. According to the nurse/tech I spoke with, that will be all that needs to be done. The mole displayed tendencies that COULD become melanoma, but it WASN'T a melanoma. They want to widen the circumference of the crater in my chest--which has just managed to level off a nice itchy scab--to ensure they got all the potentially affected skin.

So I go back in on the 30th to let them gouge away. I assume this will be the with-stitches variety rather than another deep shave. Good thing...I think the next notch on the scale would be the Marianas Trench core.

I know it's human for one to ponder his own mortality when forced to face potential health issues. This one hardly fazed me, but I must admit there is a dark part of me that expected this one to be something. Ever since high school, I have believed that I will be done in by a brain tumor. Don't ask me why. Part of me acknowledges that the roots of that fear shared a period of Reagan-era time that saw me sweating through many a paranoid night waiting for the nukes to rain down on Glendale. My mind was a hyper-reactive, unpredictable thing known to wander and obsess.

But somehow I got the indelible impression in my brain that that same organ would eventually be consumed by a life-ending malignancy. Very morbid topic, I admit, but something I've occasionally ruminated on even to this day.

When I die, I certainly don't want it to be in a horrible, shocking or traumatically painful way. Who does? I'm not particularly in for a prolonged suffering outage either. But the thought of a lot of bed rest sounds pretty good to me.

Then I got to thinking, why do I like to sleep so much? I always have. I truly love to sleep as much as just about anything I have done or can do. Maybe I've been practicing to die all my life.

Admittedly, though, one of the best parts of sleep is waking up refreshed. When you think, "wow, what a great sleep." Sometimes that can only be surpassed by being awake an hour and realizing you've got nothing better to do than go back to sleep. That's truly one of life's greatest pleasures.

But with a prolonged sickness, the thought of waking up groggy and disoriented doesn't particularly appeal to me. I'd be cool with the sleeping, but if waking doesn't hold any reward, what's the point?

The Greek and Roman gods of sleep and dreaming always walked figuratively hand-in-hand with death. They made for strange bedfellows, it seemed. Sleep is as close as we can get to death and, perhaps, dreams are the equivalent of skipping stones across the river Styx and looking at rippled reflections of our lives.

I have absolutely no idea where I'm going with this. Obviously, sleep is on my mind and for now, hopefully, there are no tumors joining it there.

I offer this ridiculous entry to the universe for what it is: abject humanity.