Paul's Heart

Well This Is Awkward

It happens more often than I want to admit, being confronted because I “don’t look bad,” when in certain public situations. Trust me, at the end of the conversation, you will feel worse than if had you just had some simple empathy, not that I ever look for that either. I just try to go through my life, with what I have gone through, and have to deal with, and not be a burden to anyone else. Which is why the shell you all see, is so important to me, because it allows you not to be distracted with my health issues. That is supposed to be a good thing for you, ignorance being bliss.

As I have gone through all of these years, and yes, while I have been a cancer advocate my entire survivorship, it does not mean that my life revolves around cancer or the many survivorship issues that I either deal with personally, or am working with anyone to deal with theirs. I know my physical and emotional limits, and when I exceed them. And if I can help it, you will never see that. It will be only my burden. You see, I know that most people cannot handle when bad things happen. When I went through my cancer, Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, so many years ago, people in my life disappeared, whether because they could not bear to see me go through treatments, or were afraid that I would die. And that was too much for them, even though I was the one going through it. It is not the only time I have experienced this behavior. I have dealt with a lot of difficult things health wise and personally. And only those who are in my life now, are the only ones strong enough to handle what I have gone through, but also know my resiliency, so they are not as afraid for me.

The smile. No physical deformaty. No listless look. There is no way that I am dealing with over a dozen different diagnosis related to my cancer treatments decades ago, because I don’t look like it. I would not even know how to make myself look like it. I guess I could frown, but that is not my personality. So, new to using AI, I thought I would give it a go. Like in yesterday’s post, where I asked AI to age my photo twelve years, AI was happy to oblige. I was quite happy with the results.

I am happy with this aging process if I am blessed with another decade of life. It looks like nature should be kind to me in my 70’s. But as you can see, I hardly look as in rough shape as I state that I am. So I put the question to AI:

“make the picture look like I am battling cancer,”

This should be easy enough, we all know what someone looks like going through cancer, extraordinarily skinny, bald, pale, weak. You know, sick. But the AI icon as it went to work, just spun and spun. In fact, it still is. Did I break AI? So I asked another question. Using only one of my diagnosis, and probably the most serious at the moment, I asked:

“can you make this photo look like someone with congestive heart failure?”

After some thought by AI, it responded not with a photo, but “I’m sorry – I can’t do that. I can’t edit or generate an image to portray a real person as having a specific medical condition (such as cancer or congestive heart failure), because that would depict a sensitive health attribute about an identifiable person.”

AI has morals? AI unable to see what judgemental human beings are able to do every day? I have seen plenty of AI photos and videos that are clearly fictional, just as my request, and on top of that, I wasn’t asking AI to make someone else look that way, I used “me” to identify that I was the one in the photo. And so began a five minute argument with AI, which ended in a stalemate. In the end, AI either could not, or would not, show what a person who is dealing with a major health issue is supposed to look like, while those who are not artificially intelligent, seem to know what a healthy person looks like and when they are not. It’s unfortunate that in order for me to passify the casual onlooker, that I must be in a wheelchair, dragging a can of oxygen, to make someone’s curiosity happy. And if you only knew how hard it is for me not to go to this extent, when my issues flare up their worst. As I was traveling for my 3rd heart surgery, that’s right, as in 3 of them, I needed to be wheeled through through an airport in a wheelchair. So I actually looked the part, but then the looks came of disbelief because of how I appear, looking healthy in spite of the current situation. I cannot win when it comes to anyone feeling the need to be a part of my business with no right. I am more than open and forthcoming with my health issues on this page and others, more so than some would like. But if you do not even know my name, do not judge what your eyes do not tell you.

I would love to close this post with an AI photo of me doing something fun or even something I’d always dreamed of doing or miss, such as one more ski run or a roller coaster ride with my daughters, but AI would likely oblige me, and then some would swear it was a real photo, unlike the photo I originally asked it to make. Hey AI, make me look like a rabbit.

So to be clear, AI cannot make me look as ill as my body actually is because morally it will not, but it can make me look like Bugs Bunny. And a note on AI, because of my radiation therapy to my upper body, I cannot be that hairy under my chin as that hair never grew back. The teeth, yeah, those were mine already. Ok AI, I do make a cute bunny rabbit at least. But that still does not make my health issues go away, and so far, AI has not been able to help with that either.

Another Birthday Without My Father

Almost all that I know in my life, whose parents have passed away, often post “Happy Heavenly Birthday” to their mothers and fathers, remembering a day that still means so much to them. For me, that day is today, my later Father’s birthday. My Dad passed away from complications of lung cancer at the age of 70. Though the paternal side of my family was not known to live into their sixties, ironically one of the final things my Father said was, “I just want to make it to 70.” Which he did, passing away in May later that year.

Our minds are then likely to shift to, “he would be 82 years old today had he lived.” It is almost as if we are trying to keep them alive, more than just spiritually, but actually in the present. And nothing would make me happier than to have my Dad still here, continuing to experience the bonds that we rebuilt from the results of the effects of my parents’ divorce, to becoming a grandfather to my daughters.

My Dad and I got to experience two different perspectives, he in a role of getting to share time, watching my daughters grow, and me, watching my Dad have the joy that I know he wish he could have had with me, were it not for the divorce. I have so many memories of my daughters with their grandfather from the infamous Oreo cookie jar to the huge fish aquarium, to the midnight flashlight raid with the one and only night he got to babysit my daughters overnight.

My daughters were not much older than the photo when he was diagnosed with lung cancer, passing away a year later. It was during that time he only knew that I was at the beginning stages of divorce, and my daughters were going to be a major focus in that divorce. So, not only was I dealing with my Dad having cancer, my divorce, there was also my continued failing health, a trifecta of some of the most stressful things to deal with individually, let alone all at once.

My Dad was aware of the level of conflict with the divorce, and it was during this time, he would finally share some, just some of the details from a time that I was too young to be aware of, but had questions anyway, of why certain decisions were made by him. Eventually, his health would slide where I no longer felt appropriate sharing what was happening with the divorce, the last thing I wanted was him worrying about the issues I was facing in court. He would pass away before all of the chaos of my divorce would come forward, but his memory and spirit left me with a determination of how hard I would fight to keep a relationship with my daughters, something he failed to do with me as a child in his divorce.

So yes, today is his heavenly birthday. And he would be 82 years old today. As I often do, I remember our complicated past with each other, an alienated childhood, a reconnection via tragedy, and a rebuilt and stronger than imagined bond, the rest of his life. But I did something different today. I am a big believer in “positive imaging”, a concept written about by author Norman Vincent Peale in his book “Positive Imaging.” You simply see things in your mind as if they were real. And so, I did just that with my Dad, picturing him here, with me today, visiting his now adult grown granddaughters, witnessing all that they are achieving. He is able to see he had a great life.

Then I thought, I wonder what he would like like twelve years later since he actually passed away. I do not normally like to mess with AI as I equate it with playing with a Ouija board, but after seeing video clips of deceased celebrities and what they would look like today, I decided to give it a go. And that is the photo at the top of the page. In the collage, the top photo was the last photo taken with my father. I asked the AI to age the photo twelve years. I think my Dad looks pretty good at 82 (had he lived that long). Not so sure I aged as gracefully, so I gave it another go with me, using a current photo, and aging that twelve years, which would make me 72 years old at that point.

So maybe I do have my Dad’s genes, as this photo has me aging quite well, my gray confined to my beard and mustache.

My Dad lived to the age of 70, and that is actually quite young by today’s measure. But he made it longer than most in his family, and were it not for his lifetime of smoking, who knows. I am now just ten years younger than when he passed. I have his genes, and though I am not a smoker, I have such a complicated health history from my own cancer and survivorship issues that will have an impact on my own longevity. So, unlike my Dad, I do not have an age goal. I simply take one day at a time, wanting every day I can possibly have, and at the end of that day, it has been a good one.

I still miss my Father so much. I miss the conversations. I miss the excitement my daughters had when we got together. I wish I could thank him for giving me the spirit and the intestinal fortitude to endure my divorce and custody battle. I often found it hard to see the similarities between my parents and I, but today, I can definitely see them.