PINK PILLS FOR PALE PEOPLE

I grew up in Brockville. I was born in Kingston and I graduated from both high school and university in Kingston, but from the age of two until the end of Grade Twelve, I was a Brockville boy, and always glad to be. For one thing, Brockville is built on the banks of the spectacular St. Lawrence River. For another, Brockville was named after a genuine hero of the War of 1812, Sir Isaac Brock (although dying as he did in the Battle of Queenston Heights, he didn't live to hear that a little United Empire Loyalist town on the banks of the St. Lawrence River had re-named itself after him -- or that he had just been knighted.)


Not so much "a thing" for me but true nonetheless is that one of Brockville's first millionaires, a Victorian businessman and politician named George Fulford, made his fortune by acquiring the rights to market "Dr. Williams' Pink Pills for Pale People," which brings me to the subject of how else I am doing, that is, to the subject of chemotherapy.


Every day for the entire six weeks of my radiation regime, I swallow eight pink pills, four after breakfast and four after dinner. That's my chemotherapy and when all is said and done, that will be 336 pink pills "down the little red hatch." Truth be told, I have disliked every swallow. I admit that, as I am under doctor's orders to avoid direct sunshine, I am and will remain one of this summer's Pale People. But it's not doing without a suntan that I dislike. Nor is it the pink-nicity of the pills. It's the fact that they are poison. As Wikipedia puts it: "Traditional chemotherapeutic agents act by killing cells that divide rapidly, one of the main properties of most cancer cells. This means that chemotherapy also harms cells that divide rapidly under normal circumstances: cells in the bone marrow, digestive tract, and hair follicles." Hair follicles, I have found I can do without hair follicles but I am of a different mind concerning my bone marrow and my digestive tract.


So here I am, day by day, a Pale Person swallowing sixteen little Poison Pink Pills, and generally always creeped out by the experience. But I'm not at all inclined to turn away from the counsel of my doctors and from their choice of pills. I've been telling people for years that sometimes you have to pick your poison. These little pink pills are the poison I pick. All 336 of them. Not because I'm pale but because I've got cancer. The alarming truth is, if something (and/or SomeOne) doesn't kill it, it's going to kill me. The fact that the pink pills are deadly poisons is the whole point. We're talking about Poisonous Pills for a Poisoned Person.


Helpfully, the whole idea of fighting killers with killers is not new to me. For all my life, I have carried around within my body a whole army of killers: pride, self-centredness, lust, envy, spite, bitterness, mean-spiritedness, laziness. These poisons are very able to kill my friendships, my family relationships, my peace of mind and my reputation. From the days when I was a young boy growing up in Brockville, I have always had these deadly enemies at work within me, with many a battle to be won or lost. One of my original Nine Dead Men, John Owen (1616-1683) wrote powerfully on this topic. He was not only a man of deep thoughts but also of big words and so he liked to call it "mortification," and now my chemotherapy reminds me of what he wrote. “Let no man think to kill sin with few, easy, or gentle strokes. He who hath once smitten a serpent, if he follow not on his blow until it be slain, may repent that ever he began the quarrel. And so he who undertakes to deal with sin, and pursues it not constantly to the death" … "Do you mortify? Do you make it your daily work? Be always at it whilst you live; cease not a day from this work; be killing sin or it will be killing you.”


So thanks again for asking how I am doing. But how are you doing? Let us wisely pick our poison, or to change the metaphor, choose our weapons. And the chief weapon in the war against personal wickedness is the Bible, which describes itself as "a fire and a hammer that breaks a rock in pieces" and "a two-edged sword" that pierces, divides and discerns the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And let us trust the God of hope to strengthen us to fight fiercely and so to conquer everything that is positioned to conquer pale poisoned people like us.