In 2017, Perry Muse was diagnosed with metastatic, or Stage 4, prostate cancer. For the fifty-seven-year-old Army veteran and business executive, it was the latest calamity in a life journey beset with misfortune, including a near-death motorcycle accident—one of many injuries for the self-described “thrill-seeker”—and homelessness. In his memoir, MORBID THOUGHTS AND THE DOMINO EFFECT, Muse chronicles the day-to-day experiences of a cancer patient, interspersed with colorful tales of the life experiences that shaped his character and outlook. MORBID THOUGHTS opens with Muse, an ardent animal lover, reflecting poignantly on his family of pets (including Sparky, a Papillon, Saint Bernards Sebastian and Thor, and a Main Coon cat named Mr. Mitten) and his realization that they might outlive him. It’s one of many “morbid thoughts” that Muse experiences throughout his ordeal: “How bad is the cancer?” “How long do I have to live?” “Who will take care of my wife if I die?” They’re questions that plague the thoughts of anyone affected by a life-threatening illness, and Muse invites readers into his experience of dealing with—and moving beyond—these thoughts with straightforward candor and wry, sardonic humor.
MORBID THOUGHTS provides a long and detailed account of Muse’s medical ordeals—not just the treatments and surgeries related to his illness, but also the numerous other injuries and complications he’s sustained over the years. And as anyone who has had to navigate the U.S. healthcare system can attest, much of the emotional burden of dealing with illness has as much to do with insurance companies and making sense of treatment options as the physical strain itself. A cancer patient quickly becomes an expert on the topic, and Muse exhaustively documents his treatments, complete with photographs, illustrations, and even X-rays pointing out precisely what was done and where. One tongue-in-cheek drawing indicates every one of his scars, and the injury or surgery that caused it (including a startling number of dog bites). Though Muse claims not to put much stock in astrology, he is a Sagittarius, and most of the book’s chapters are organized around themes inspired by Sagittarian traits (“the Sagittarius man is typically a natural scholar”). It’s an effective structure for a book that covers a great deal of ground, connecting his cancer journey with his life story and the implications of his illness for his loved ones, especially his wife, Nila.
As a writer, Muse is, to put it lightly, a maximalist, and the degree of detail Muse puts into his memoir is sometimes overwhelming. But as a painstaking account of a cancer patient’s external and internal life, including everything a patient and their family are likely to encounter, MORBID THOUGHTS offers an invaluable source of information, insight, and wisdom.
A genial and natural storyteller, Perry Muse infuses his memoir, MORBID THOUGHTS AND THE DOMINO EFFECT, with enormous charm and personality making it not merely a litany of hardships but a heartfelt, authentic tale of living through adversity that informs and inspires.
~Edward Sung for IndieReader