Translation of the article that Oliver Sacks wrote in the NYTimes reflecting on his cancer and the nearness of his own death. (Translation of Antonio Tejero Peregrina reviewed by Yolanda Calvo G mez; thanks Antonio): A month ago, I felt I was healthy, even robustly healthy.
At 81, I still swam a mile every day. But my luck is over, a few weeks ago I learned that I have multiple metastases in the liver. Nine years ago they discovered that he had a very rare tumor in the eye, an ocular melanoma. Although the radiation and the laser needed to end the melanoma disabled that eye, only in exceptional cases those tumors metastasize.
I am among the unlucky 2%. I am grateful to have had the gift of nine years of good health and productivity since the first diagnosis, but now I am face to face with death. Cancer occupies a third of my liver, and although its progress may be slowed down, this particular type of cancer cannot be cured. It is up to me now how to face these remaining months of life.
I have to live in the richest, deepest and most productive way that I can. For this, I am encouraged by the words of one of my favorite philosophers, David Hume, who, knowing that he was sick with death at the age of 65, wrote a short biography in a single day in April 1776. He titled it: “My own lifetime". “Now I recognize, in the face of the rapid outcome, ” he wrote, “that I have suffered very little from this disease, and what is more strange, I have never suffered a moment of dejection from my spirit. I have the same ardor as always in my studies, and the same satisfaction of being company. ”I have been fortunate enough to live eighty years and the fifteen years that I have been granted over those of Hume have lived them equally rich in work and love.
At that time I have published five books and completed an autobiography, of course longer than the few pages of Hume, which will be published this spring. I have so many books about to end. Hume continues, "I am a man of mild dispositions, of controlled temperament, of an open, social and cheerful mood, capable of becoming attached, but susceptible to enmity, and with great moderation in all my passions." Here I differ with Hume. Although I have enjoyed loving relationships and friendships and I have no real enmity, I cannot say (and no one who knows me could say it) that I am a man of slight dispositions. On the contrary, I am a man of vehement dispositions, with violent enthusiasms, and an extreme immoderation in all my passions. And yet, one of Hume's phrases amazes me for being especially true: "It's hard, " he wrote, "to be more detached from life than I am right now."
During the last days, I have been able to see my life as from a superior point of view, from a high altitude, as if it were a landscape, and with a deep sense of connection with all its facets. This does not mean that I am finished with life. On the contrary, I feel intensely alive, and I want and hope, in the time I have left, to deepen my friendships, say goodbye to those I love, write more, travel and have the strength, to achieve new levels of understanding and perception. This will involve boldness, clarity and simple and plain speaking; Trying to adjust my accounts with the world. But there will be time, in turn, to have fun. I feel a sudden and clear capacity for concentration and perspective. There is no time for anything that is not essential. I have to concentrate on myself, my work and my friends. I will no longer see the news of the night. I will no longer pay any attention to politics or discussions about global warming. It is not indifference but detachment; I still care deeply about the Midwest, about global warming, about growing inequality, but these things are no longer my business; They belong to the future.
I rejoice when I meet graceful young people, even the one who diagnosed my metastasis. I think the future is in good hands. I have been increasingly aware, during the last 10 years or so, of the deaths of my contemporaries. My generation is disappearing, and I have felt every death as a tear, a loss of a part of myself. There will be no one like us when we are gone, although there has never been anyone who is the same as another, never. When people die, they cannot be replaced. They leave gaps that cannot be filled, and that is the destiny - the genetic and neurotic destiny - of each human being, that of being a single individual, that seeks and finds its own way, that lives its own life, that dies His own death. I cannot try to pretend or pretend that I am not afraid. But my predominant feeling is gratitude.
I have loved and been loved, I have been given much and I have given much in return; I have read and traveled and reflected and I have written . I've had a tug of war with the world, the characteristic interaction of writers and readers. Above all, I have been a sensitive person, a thinking animal, on this beautiful planet, and that by itself has been a huge privilege and an incredible adventure.
Oliver Sacks, professor of neurology at the Medical College of the University of New York.
Oliver Sacks before cancer and his own death
