The Upside of Illness

There is none. I must respectfully – and carefully – disagree with the Marines that pain is weakness leaving the body. Pain is the body having a temper tantrum. It overreacts [vasovagal response]. It’s bad at explaining itself [referred pain]. It’s loud and annoying and you can’t wait for it to get over itself and get back to normal behavior.

However, there is clarity in sickness. A while back, a post-root canal got infected while I was out of town by myself. Can we count how many things are wrong with that sentence? Put it this way, I was in my favorite city in the world & I came home early. That’s how much pain I was in. While I was ill, life seemed so simple. The existential voices that question my purpose in the universe and the logistical voices that worry about to-do lists were both drowned out by the one screaming voice wanting it all to STOP.

For the last two weeks, my daylight hours have been spent grazing Mathilda or sitting with her. I did very, very little else. I managed one short interview wherein I was so mentally absent that I had to toss my written notes and go back to the tape. Fortunately, the gentleman in question was informative enough and charming enough that he carried the day with a minimum of prompting. I kept up the daily posts here, usually late at night, just before I collapsed into bed. If there hadn’t been Rolex Kentucky Three-Day Event to escape into [Peregrinatio], the blog would have ended right there.

Dishes? Not even a twinge as I passed by the overloaded sink. Clothes? I just put the same barn jeans back on from the day before. Hygiene? No one’s going to see me other than Hubby & horses. They were going to have to take what they got.

As Mathilda has gotten stronger, I can leave the barn for longer. As the crisis recedes, life reasserts itself. I look around and realize that the house is in even worse shape than usual. There are blogs I need to draft ahead. There’s this cute fellow who appears to live here. Life is better now. Life is much, much better. But life is more complex than it was a week ago.