Professor Yeti

It’s not true that young people think they’re invincible. Thoughts of our mortality are commonplace, impossible to ignore given the constant reminders via car crashes on the freeway, news of bloodshed around the world, and the smiling faces of dead celebrities staring at us from the front page of the newspaper. We know death is inevitable, and that to predict the timing and circumstances of our demise is impossible. We know the body will break down, one way or another.

What we ignore, or at least try desperately to deny, not so much the death as the wearing down of the vessel. We don’t expect to get sick, at least not seriously so, or to break anything, or to otherwise lose the vigor and energy that seem as though they ought to be the intrinsic rights of youth. If youth is wasted on the young, it is because the young generally have the ability to be carefree, to take their health for granted, and to see the world through the blinders of optimism and naïveté. By middle age, we expect arthritis and hypertension to set in; these are the signifiers of age, expected though not welcome. The product is nearing the end of its warranty. No one expects perfect health at 50 or even 40; by this point, we’re obsessed with frequent exams and ever-present anxiety over the prospect of maladies. But everyone expects perfect health at age 25.

Rarely in life are expectations, at least the major, long-term ones, met, and when the body starts to break down seemingly too early, when one ought to be in the prime of life, there is a sense of grand unfairness. By our early twenties, we’re supposed to have figured things out, to be independent, to fend for and take care of ourselves, and to have the physical well-being to do so. To experience all of this, and then have it snatched away by debilitating illness or injury brings about a miasma of frustration and helplessness and to feel a grave injustice has been done.

Suddenly, you’re looking in from the outside, wanting nothing more than to have your boring life back. From the hospital bed, you field calls from friends and family, repeating doctors’ diagnoses and test results, each description a reminder that you’ve been cheated, that you’re not supposed to be in this room, surrounded by flowers, cards and the omnipresent odor of antiseptic’s battle with decay. The friendly voices are a welcome respite from the horrors of daytime television and the discomfort of endless visits by the nurse to check vital signs (yep, still alive, just like last time) and dispense pills of all manner of shapes and sizes and of a singular bitter, chalky taste. But the voices on the other end of the phone, though they mean well, and though they do offer a bit of cheer, can add to the frustration, because when the body has failed, you really don’t want to talk about it. But, of course, there is nothing else to discuss, no real news to share. No one likes to discuss serious health matters, especially those most affected by them, and particularly when the details are sketchy and the diagnoses uncertain. Still here. Still sick, so they tell me. . . . And how are your kids?

The problem is, when the young body breaks down, everything becomes a signal of what might have been and what is supposed to be. An advertisement in the paper reminds you of a festival you wanted to attend; the high-pitched squeals of misbehaving young visitors down the hall makes you frustrated that those brats can run around, punch each other, eat Doritos all day, and still fall asleep in their own beds, while you’re tethered in place by an IV. A baseball game plays on the TV: I should be there, in the stands. The nurses complain about how hot it’s been: Oh, really? Wish I could be out there sweating and getting sunburned and eating ice cream. Life is supposed to be active at this point, but suddenly your role is reduced to that of a passive observer, and every sentence uttered, every scene witnessed, every noise heard, every bland meal brought to you on a plastic tray becomes a reminder that life isn’t fair, that this sort of thing might be permissible in forty years, but not now. Not now.

Now you have potential to live up to, if you could only live. But the wear and tear, the breakdown of the body, won’t allow that. It came too soon, out of nowhere, and the misery is only compounded by the frustration and despair of analyzing and over-analyzing how it came to this and how you could possibly get out of it.

With the feeling of being cheated, of falling victim, dangerously, to life’s unfairness, comes a sense that not only is something not right, but a determination to fix the problem, to fight the injustice. It is, really, nothing more than the craving for a return to normalcy, to the energy and strength that is your right as a young person: This warranty isn’t expired, this vessel isn’t broken, and I’m going to prove it.

Doug Mack (doug@professoryeti.com) recommends that if you do get sick, you do so in Northfield, Minnesota, which has an excellent hospital with decent food.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 25th, 2005 at 9:10 pm and is filed under Columns. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.