Reflection 9 Sight effects


Medical procedures can produce a myriad of negative side effects. Chemotherapy that makes your hair fall out in accelerated time. Anesthesia that causes seizure-like body shaking that leaves you with physical abnormalities. Rapid weight loss from pneumonia that makes you resemble David Bowie during his “thin white duke” phase (even with some of the drug-pale skin pallor).

I can’t even claim that I wasn’t warned. Of course it’s difficult to focus initially when you sit in a hazy stupor caused by the piercing reality of the combination of a morbid diagnosis and a pile of consent forms with fine print that explains in detail how your very life may be in jeopardy even by the therapy designed to heal you.

It’s like the advertisements in magazines for prescription drugs to fight some emotional problem. The eye-catching ads are sometimes followed by two full pages of cautionary statements about what might happen to you if these drugs are ingested. I tend to not read these pages, choosing to believe in a more optimistic outcome. (Or, more sensibly, opt to just forget about taking the drug).

But these are the negative side effects. There are other outcomes, which I call “sight effects”. These are the positives. Like restructuring life priorities. Having a new appreciation for family. Enjoying small moments. Accepting little nuisances and frustrations for what they are and refusing to let them shape our precious time. Worrying less about what others may think of us. And living our lives more boldly.

Through the darkness we get a second chance, and then we see more clearly.