A Happy Ending

I’ve had a stomach flu all week so I have been feeling quite delicate. Since the discovery of my sleep apnea and subsequent treatment thereof, my overall health has been returning to a state of normalcy such that, during weeks like this when I am ill, it is a normal feeling of illness. During the depths of my Chronic Fatigue during the 90s and beyond, it was quite a different story.

The CFS was so horrible that I actually looked forwarded to getting a good old-fashioned cold or flu virus. As miserable as a virus is (and the one this week has been one of the worst in a long time), it’s like a vacation compared to CFS. For some odd reason for which I was always grateful, whenever I got a virus, the CFS symptoms would abate during the virus. It was literally like going on holiday. For the week or ten days that it would last, I could just relax and sleep all day and be comfortable, rather than fighting those horrible CFS pains and indescribable exhaustion that plagued me during all my waking hours, minute by minute, none of which there was anything I could turn to for relief. My relief came at night when I was able to go back to bed. That was my blessing. I could find relief in complete bed rest. Unfortunately, I couldn’t stay in bed 24 hours a day. As you might imagine, even for a very ill person, that only makes things worse. I had no choice but to tough it out all day long, counting the minutes until I could once again go to bed for the night.

So viruses were always a very welcome addition to my routine. A virus meant that I would have a whole week without the pain of the CFS; and since the mild tiredness that you always experience with a virus is nothing compared to the sensation of being hit by a train that you get with CFS, even the change in fatigue symptoms was most welcoming.
Fortunately, I no longer have to deal with all that, I no longer have to welcome mild illness as a respite from much worse illness. In the last few years, my life has been approaching normalcy. When I get a virus these days, it’s a normal feeling of illness, something quite manageable, something relatively comfortable. These days, they always have a happy ending. I should be having another happy ending in a day or two.

But there is one thing that is very strange that people with serious illness are oftened burdened with. For a reason I don’t understand, people think it’s a source of comfort to seriously ill people to share stories about other people they consider to be even more seriously ill. It’s like, "See how much worse they have it? Aren’t you lucky!" I have a clear memory of Kathy Hogan’s boyfriend coming back from Vietnam during the 1960s. The young man had been wounded over there, and was back in the States for rehab before getting his discharge. He had been shot in the kidney. Having had bladder infections and knowing how painful they are, I couldn’t imagine how awful it would be to take a bullet in the kidney. A little kidney stone is one of the most excruciatingly painful things someone can suffer through. I couldn’t imagine what a bullet would be like. Yet I remember everyone talking about the boy. "He was so lucky to get it in the kidney. It could have been so much worse." I imagine they were saying the same thing to him. It’s an indelible childhood memory. How could anyone have considered this young man to be lucky? He had gone to war and gotten shot. Why is it that so many people think people with serious medical conditions find comfort being informed that there are other people worse off? I will never understand that.

During the depths of my CFS, I don’t know how many people came to me and said, "Well, at least it’s not this" or "you’re lucky it’s not that." The biggest insult of all: "Chronic Fatigue Syndome? Oh, I think I’ve had that all my life!" How many times did mother come to my room to tell me stories of the enormous suffering of the saints, or read me articles about the refugees suffering through Yugoslavia’s civil war. And she would always end it by saying, "Don’t you feel lucky now? Aren’t you glad you don’t have it as bad as they do?" They say no one else can feel your pain and in the case of CFS that’s particularly true. But why do people think that sick people find comfort in hearing of the miseries of other sick people? And why did anyone think that my suffering was any less than the people in the stories they were telling me?

Usually when I’m ill, my mind naturally drifts toward the negative. If there is something that I was feeling stress over, the stress seems to greatly magnify with the illness. Ordinary activities that I would not give a second thought to now seem insurmountable, and the thought of having to do them becomes a source of anxiety. During the years I battled CFS, it was my greatest challenge to fight off all these feelings of negativity. It took me five years just to work up the nerve to go back to Los Angeles and clean out my storage locker because even that relatively doable task seemed insurmountable.

So now I can get ill without being overwhelmed with negativity. But that doesn’t mean it’s completely gone. They say the best therapy when you’re ill is to surround yourself with positive things, read happy books, play cheery music. There’s only one thing wrong with that approach. If you do, you will forever after be associating that cheery music with the illness and will never be able to enjoy that music again. So I don’t go for that. I say just stay in bed and sleep and try to make my mind go as blank as possible.

In the case of my stomach virus this week, I’ve had a different set of emotional stimuli to deal with. For the past few months, I’ve been reading this wonderful book called "Unbroken." It is the World War II story of Army Air Corps Lieutenant Louis Zamperini and the horrible ordeals he endures throughout the war. I say it’s a wonderful book strictly from a literary point of view. It is very beautifully written, perhaps too beautifully, because author Laura Hillenbrand really puts you right in the cockpit and makes you feel all the horror and pain they are feeling. It is quite a difficult book to handle emotionally. The ordeals she describes just go from bad to worse to much worse to intolerable to how the hell did he survive - I know I wouldn’t have!

It’s a stellar tribute to the enormous sacrifices our parents’ generation made in the war. But the writing is so vivid that you are suffering right along with them. The harrowing accounts of the air battles are bad enough, but then he gets shot down and is adrift at sea going through a worse ordeal drifting some 5,000 miles in a lifeboat over a period of almost 3 months, fighting off sharks on an almost daily basis while dehydrating and starving to death. His period adrift was later said to be a new world’s record.

Then came a totally heartbreaking chapter. After three months of battling the elements and very near death, they finally see a plane. Rescue at last! Then the crushing disappointment, a disappointment that would have driven any lesser men to suicide. The plane is Japanese and they are about to be captured. It goes from worse to much worse in the POW camps, which made the German stalags seem like luxury hotels by comparison. As you read, you think that the camps must at least be an improvement on being lost at sea. They were not. They were worse. Starvation, disease, and inhuman treatment abounded. At least in the lifeboat, they only had to worry about the first of these. Now their miseries were tripled. As they suffer through daily beatings compounded by beriberi and dysentery, the worse becomes much worse. They don’t even have the most basic of sanitation. At least American POWs in Germany had that much.

About a week ago, I started the chapter where they are all transferred to another POW camp near Tokyo. This has to be better. How can it be worse? It is worse. The head officer is a sadist in the extreme and the men are so badly abused that many of them die. This monster takes a particular dislike to Louis simply because he was a former champion athlete who had competed in the Olympics. He singles Louis out for beatings everyday, many of which last an hour or more. How does someone survive this? Somehow Louis did. He said it was mostly out of hatred; he wasn’t going to give this monster the satisfaction of killing him. If he can survive, perhaps one day he’ll have a chance to kill the bastard himself.

Even the other Japanese can’t stand this guy. Eventually the camp commander manages to pull some political strings and the monster gets transferred. What a wondrous sigh of relief! They can now all sit out the rest of the war, perhaps not in comfort but at least no longer in constant fear. As the Allies close in on Tokyo, Louis gets transferred again. Can much worse progress to intolerable? What are the odds? As he enters his new camp hours away on the other side of the island, guess who’s waiting for him? The monster!

Now in addition to the beriberi and the dysentery and the starvation and the beatings, the monster forces them all into slave labor. In their almost critically weakened conditions, now they must do backbreaking labor 14 hours a day. The price for falling down on the job is death. How does someone tolerate this? How does anyone survive it? Somehow Louis does.

So as I camped out in the bathroom Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday losing everything I’d eaten the last three days, my thoughts are drifting to the plights of these wretched POWs as they fight their dysentery and other woes. As my chest heaves, I feel their chests heaving. As I ache and stumble about with dizziness, I feel their aches and dizziness. I am ill, and negativity is swamping me again. I feel no comfort that their pain is worse than mine, just grief that they had to endure it at all.

Today, I got to the chapter where the Allies have nearly decimated Japan and everyone knows the end is near. The Japanese are totally demoralized. The prisoners can only hope in vain that they can survive until the liberation. There’s one big hitch. They know there’s a general order from the Japanese High Command that all POWs are to be liquidated before the Allies arrive. With the war going as badly as it is, the execution date has now been set. It will August 22^nd.

So in late July, Louie and the other prisoners are again transported to a new camp. They know this will be their place of execution. He and the other officers have been wracking their brains for months trying to figure a way out of this but so far they’ve thought of nothing. They have been so resourceful and so successful in outfoxing their captors before, but this time they are stumped.

After everything they’ve managed to survive, they are now going to their deaths and have no options. On the one hand, we feel so deeply for them because they do not know what awaits them. On the other hand, we rejoice. They may not know what awaits them but we do. We know they are heading for a happy ending. Their execution is scheduled for August 22, 1945.

And we all know what will happen on August 6^th.