It wasn’t until very late in my 30s that I started to notice my body shedding its “invincibility.” It was my eyes that started to betray me, and I finally had to get glasses at 39. I still wasn’t getting sick very often – I went from 2011 to 2022 without ever being so ill that I couldn’t do anything, but even when I felt mildly under the weather, I struggled through it with a determined attitude. But shortly before that ’22 illness, I’d had a new-to-me and long-term bout of vertigo, something that was incapacitating and confusing for a matter of several weeks. It turned out that I’d had an ear infection, a wicked one, I guess. Maybe it was 2017 when I had a bout of some mysterious abdominal pains that eventually went away without diagnosis, and those resurfaced in a different form through cramping maybe in 2023 – they were just a couple of isolated incidents but were quite incapacitating in the moment. The mild aches and pains continued to come, and I’ve been fighting nagging hip pain for decades, something that comes every night and haunts my sleep. But still, through it all, I never felt like I was aging or picking up anything that could hold me down.

”Yep, I think you’re going to die, sorry.” (Image retrieved from here and comes courtesy of Antoni Shkraba Studio)

In May of 2024, I was hiking up in the White Mountains in New Hampshire, humidity having already settled over the mountains, but cold still in the air and ice still on the ground. The footing wasn’t great, so I wore my micro-spikes for that first hike up in Great Northeast, needing them for traction. As I neared the top, the snow and ice dissipated and I shed my spikes. On the horizon, I saw a small patch of ice I figured I could shimmy across, more because I didn’t want to bother putting the spikes on than that I thought the patch didn’t look suspect. As you might infer, it didn’t go as I’d hoped – I slipped on the ice and came down like dead weight on a fallen log with a bunch of broken branches, one of them punching me squarely in my chest. I was dazed, hurt in pride, but also with a throbbing soreness in my chest. I recall going to my rented cabin and showering, feeling the pain of the water hitting my chest. Over the remainder of the time I was up in the Whites, I watched the bruise grow, but it eventually disintegrated over the coming weeks.

Mid-January of this year, I was getting into my car when I opened my door right into my chest, squarely hitting the knot that was left behind from my fall nearly two years earlier. I distinctly remember thinking to myself, “That’s going to leave a bruise,” and then I went on with my activity and day. The soreness lingered, though, and shortly thereafter I started to have this numbness in my left bicep. That wasn’t unusual per se, as when I was a kid, I’d experienced this before, tracing it to a bundle of veins that were unartfully arranged in my upper arm. Again, I didn’t think much of this, just pushed on with life. Over time, though, I started to notice both more – not that either was getting worse, just that neither had gone away, and then I started to notice them both together, thus igniting the worry that something worse was the cause. After a month passed, I decided to schedule an appointment for urgent care (my primary-care physician had just retired and my transfer of care appointment was still months away, so I was in healthcare limbo), and that didn’t yield much as they were limited by the services they could provide. They did a wide-ranging blood test, though, and the only thing that came back was something indicative of inflammation, suggesting that it was the reaggravation of my chest injury. That physician said I should follow up with my PCP in a week if things didn’t improve.

As stated, I have no PCP currently, so I booked an appointment with one of his colleagues because he was booked up for weeks. She didn’t turn up anything in her examination and suggested an MRI, but due to some miscommunication and possible coding errors, this took longer to schedule, not to mention that the facility was backed up as it was anyway. Eventually, I did get in (a Monday in late-ish March), and I won’t go into that whole process (which was uncomfortable because of how I had to position my body for an ungodly long stretch), but as it wrapped up, they mentioned that it may take five business days to get the results, and that after the tech read them, it would be posted to my patient portal and then my physician would follow up after that. I figured five days was a worst-case scenario, but a full four days later at the time of writing, and on the cusp of a weekend, I guess they were serious – I hope the injury isn’t, because this kind of delay is ridiculous. Hire another person to read results, jeez!

Anyway, I’ve got myself convinced this is quite serious and a death sentence is forthcoming. Not exactly positive thinking, I know, but I’m also not stressed about it – I’m just settling my estate and my affairs in my mind in an overly practical way. We all have to go sometime, but this would be one of the stupidest ways to do it, possibly. If I make it through this, I’ve only got further decline ahead of me, that much is guaranteed. I do feel that I have a lot of life to live and a lot of things I’d like to do, so I hope I’m given a reprieve, and while I’m not religious in any capacity, I think this would be a cruel joke for God to play if he exists and death is around the corner.

I recall sitting in a philosophy class in grad school once and the professor making a comment about how people always react to bad news: “Why is this happening to me?” He responded, “Why shouldn’t it? Bad stuff happens to everyone, and nobody escapes it, so why would you be surprised when it finally shows up on your door?” At the moment that gave me some peace. Now, as I think about the end of the line more than is healthy, not so much. I’d like to say I’ve had a good run, but that would be an exaggeration. Give me a few more years and I’ll make it so, that way when the reaper comes calling, I’ll be in a more satisfied state and accepting of his summons.

Marco Esquandoles
Walking Dead