Emotions such as fear, anger cause distraction, make focus difficult

By David McElroy · January 26, 2012

As I waited to pull onto U.S. 11 just a few miles from my house Wednesday evening, there didn’t seem to be anything unusual about it. The highway is busy that time of day, with two lanes of traffic in each direction and a turn lane in the middle. I’ve crossed those lanes hundreds of times, and I had no way of knowing this time was going to be different.

Traffic was heavy, but I was going to have time to cross to the other side if I timed it well. Just as I pulled out, though, an oncoming car did something I didn’t expect. I accelerated to get out of the way, barreling into the turn lane, where a car coming from another direction had just unexpectedly moved. I changed directions once again and ended up in yet another lane, startling another driver.

I’d almost hit at least three cars. I pulled off the road to think about this.

When a doctor first diagnosed me with breast cancer two weeks ago and said I had to have surgery, I expected to go through changing emotions in the days leading up to the experience. But knowing that and experiencing it are two entirely different things. Four days before I’m scheduled to be cut on next Monday, I can say I’ve had a number of emotions creep up on me unexpectedly.

Until now, the worst medical procedure I’ve ever had done was a root canal two years ago. (I was scared going into that, but it turned out to be no big deal.) I’ve never had to be knocked out and cut on, so I’m a bit of a medical wimp. But I’ve found from talking to other people who’ve experienced similar things that what I’m feeling isn’t uncommon at all.

There are times when your feelings are obvious and make themselves known to everyone. It hasn’t been like that. I’ve fluctuated between feelings so normal that they’ve felt more like denial and feelings of a very low level of something almost like panic.

I’ve realized that I’ve been getting irritated easily. I’m annoyed by people who don’t mean to be annoying. I’ve even found myself annoyed by my sweet dog who just wants attention. What I’m realizing is that I’m experiencing low levels of fear and anger that don’t feel good, so I’m distracted and irritable.

The fear is easy to understand, I guess. It’s fear of the unknown. The truth of the matter is that every day is an unknown for all of us, but we eventually become blind to that. We ignore the fact that we could die any day. But when something is scheduled — on your calendar for just a few days away — you’re forced to confront that unknown. It makes me feel powerless and afraid.

That feeling of powerlessness seems to be what leads to anger. I’m not certain, but it’s all I can figure out. I don’t have anybody to be angry with. Nobody caused this problem. I’m not angry at God for letting tumors grow in our bodies — whether this one turns out to be cancerous or pre-cancerous. I guess I’m just angry that I don’t have the assurance that my life will play out as I expect it to. That sounds crazy since none of us is assured of anything past this moment. As I said, though, this situation seems to make that uncertainty more real.

The fear and the anger combine to make me feel more alone. I’ve lived alone for the past 11 years. I’ve always known I wanted to marry again and have a family. I have serious regrets about not having done that a few years back, but there’s always been the hope that maybe — just maybe — the time would come again. But I’m alone now. Something about this entire process emphasizes that and makes it feel even worse.

It’s possible that I could have made last night’s driving mistake even if I hadn’t been distracted by this issue. Maybe. All I know is that after I pulled off the road to think about what I’d almost done, I felt distracted.

I felt scared. I felt angry. And I felt alone.

That quick little incident seems to have been a microcosm of all the feelings I’ve been trying to shove aside lately. I don’t like the feelings any better. I don’t like the situation any better. But I have to face the reality and get past next Monday and see what the days after that bring.

I don’t know what the reality after that will be. It might be something that makes me afraid again, but at least I’ll have a better idea of what’s going on, so I can deal with a known situation. It might be something that makes me feel angry at the loss of some control, but I can fight that and find ways to regain control and to accept what I can’t control.

The worst is the feeling of being alone. I don’t feel as though cancer or anything else is killing me, but I do feel — right now — that this terrible feeling of being alone is killing me. And I think that’s what I’m feeling so strongly today. All of this that I’m going through is making me know that the fear and anger and annoyance are really about going through this — and living my life — alone.

I don’t want to live like this anymore, so something has to change. I’ll have to give that some serious thought after next Monday.

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If you have problems with high blood pressure, I’d like to encourage you to consider making serious changes to your diet. There might be some people who don’t have any choice but to start taking prescription medications for high blood pressure, but I’d like to tell you that I have completely eliminated my issue by eliminating all sugar and almost all carbohydrates. (A couple of months ago, my blood pressure hit 185/144, which was dangerously high — considered stage 3 hypertension.) By completely changing my eating habits, I’m down 22 pounds and my blood pressure is now in the “ideal” range — without taking any medication. In addition, I sleep better and I have more energy. Getting away from the sugar-laden mess that we generally refer to as “highly processed food” has been a life-changer for me. Now my challenge is to avoid slipping back into old habits — by eating in the dangerous ways that almost everyone in our society has come to see as normal.

When I first heard about this, I thought it must be satire. When I discovered it was real, I was appalled, but I still thought it must be a one-time thing from some nutty activist. But it turns out it’s the latest bit of pandering to a bunch of far-left activists who believe that a man can become a woman if he decides to claim he’s a woman. As everybody knows, men have prostate glands. Women do not. Period. End of story. Men can get prostate cancer. Women cannot. But political activists are so eager to pretend that a man claiming to be a “trans woman” is really a woman that they are insisting that “women” be included in public health messages about the issue. This is nothing but political virtue-signaling. If you’re a man, you know which parts you have. You know that you ought to be screened. Nobody is made any safer by dragging far-left gender ideology into simple medical reality.

Every time someone tries to tighten requirements around the use of absentee ballots, I hear screams from Democrats and others on the political left that such efforts are nothing but “suppression of black voters.” These protests have never made sense to me, especially because it’s never been a secret that absentee ballot fraud goes on all the time in certain areas. (Everybody knew it when I worked in politics.) The people who engage in such fraud are rarely caught — often because the local political establishment approves of the crime — but a Democrat who won a primary election in Clay County, Alabama, last year has pleaded guilty to this sort of cheating. Terry Andrew Heflin was running for a place on the Clay County Commission. He was caught ordering seven absentee ballots in the names of various voters and sending them to his post office box — after which he used the ballots to vote absentee for himself seven time. Did he have other people cast additional fraudulent ballots? We’ll never know. But in a primary in which he was able to win with only 141 votes, it wouldn’t take many fraudulent votes to change the election. The next time you hear “civil rights activists” claim that it’s just “voter suppression” to hurt blacks which is at the root of efforts to stop this fraud, remember Terry Heflin. If you care about fair and honest elections, ballot security and voter identity should matter to you.

A state legislator in Maine has been stripped of the ability to speak in the state Legislature — and her votes are not being counted on legislative issues — all because she made a truthful social media post. Rep. Laurel Libby (R-Auburn, Maine) opposes allowing boys to compete against girls’ teams in school athletics and she’s become known for making an issue of it. On Feb. 17, she posted on Facebook about a recent example that she found outrageous. She posted side-by-side photos of a boy named John who competed last year in a state track event and won fifth place against other boys two years ago — and a photo of the same boy (now called Katie) who won first place in the same event this year against girls. Whether you find this outrageous or not, Libby is clearly being honest and truthful about the objective facts of an issue of public importance. But the state Legislature censured her. Democrats decreed that she could not speak in the House and that her votes would not count on legislation — until she apologized for the outrage of telling the truth. She refused and her constituents have been unrepresented in the state House since then. The people who promote this ideology are out of touch with reality and won’t rest until they force the rest of us to join them in this delusion. But even if you agree with “trans” ideology, you should be appalled at this heavy-handed attack on political speech.

The late Steve Jobs was at the center of our culture’s transition from analog to digital. He co-founded Apple Computer. He led the team that revolutionized personal computing with the first Macintosh. As CEO of Apple, he led the development of the iPhone and later the iPad. You would think the children of such a man would be surrounded by technology. But Jobs and his wife Laureen didn’t let their children use iPads. Their home had few screens of any kind. Even though Jobs spent most of his time developing and selling Macs and iPhones and iPads, he was home with his wife and children for dinner when he was in town. The family ate together at a simple wooden table in their kitchen — and there were no digital devices or focus on popular culture. Instead, he’s said to have guided his family toward deep discussions of art, philosophy and education — with no iPads to be found. If the man who guided the development of such products chose a different path for his own children, does that suggest that his digital experience taught him that children need human connection, not screens? And does it suggest the possibility that we might be better off if we made the same choice for our families?

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