Fightin’ the Bell

We have all kinds of prompts and alarms these days to keep us on track:  phone texts, the dryer, Alexa, Siri, the washer, the microwave, etc.  Alarms and prompts are two different things.  When I say alarms I mean the big ones that actually startle you physically.  They’re unpleasant, but thankfully the effect is short lived, although you never forget them.  When I was first diagnosed with cancer, I was working at the hospital when my future oncologist, Dr. Geetha Kamath, walked in my office and sat down.  I thought she was there to complain about the clerks smoking in Medical Records.  “You’ve got cancer” she deadpanned.  I was shocked; I expected it to be just a cyst.  I can’t unforget the moment; it’s permanently sketched.

I guess I should have been better prepared for alarms given how I grew up.  My Dad was always intentionally scaring the wits out of us by jumping out from behind dark hallways or blowing the car horn when we walked by.  My Mom, on the other hand, was innocently alarmed by creative things I often did. When I was around ten my brother Chris and I were wrestling in our 2nd floor bedroom above the downstairs family room.  My mom yelled up to us to stop the wrestling, so we shifted gears and pitched this 4 foot tall stuffed toy rabbit out the window.  It fell from the sky like a dead body directly in front of the bay window where she was drinking tea.  I’m not sure what we heard first, the tea cup smashing, the screaming, or her feet bolting up the stairs to see who fell out the window.  Clearly, perceptions and reality don’t always mix with alarms. 

On a similar note, when I was in high school I would occasionally walk down to my father’s law office if I missed the bus home.  This one winter night it was below freezing so he wanted to put anti-freeze in the car radiator before we took off.  I was in the passenger seat looking at him under the crack of the car hood all dressed up in his lawyer clothes with felt gloves, fedora, and long overcoat working hard to pour the anti-freeze in the radiator without a funnel.  Although he didn’t, I felt it was the perfect moment to lay on the car horn.  The memory of him yelling and dousing the entire car with anti-freeze fluid still makes me misty.  I learned from the best that some alarms stay in your memory forever.

It’s alarming to get bad news, especially when it’s about your own health.  Trust me, the shock of it wears off, but the memory stays for ever.  For your own good health, however, don’t relive those moments over and over again every day.  Alarms shouldn’t run constantly.  Can you imagine a smoke alarm blaring permanently?  That mindset sets you back and makes you paranoid; you might even start envisioning bodies falling out of the sky.  Instead, turn off the alarm, take a deep breath, and go tackle the rest of your life that’s waiting for you.  Slainte.