catching up
Friday, January 29, 2010 (23:00:58)

Posted by horatio

Life really does have a way of slipping ahead of you when you're not watching, and sometimes even when you are, and then reaching back to bite you in the rear. Maybe that's not the best analogy, but that's the gist of how life has felt lately. Always a step behind, trying to stay a step ahead, hoping that when it all evens out and adds up, you'll at least me swimming above water. Who knows, some days it works, others, not so much. It seems like lately it has been more of the not so much, and less of the mostly.

I've been healthy most of my life. I was one of those kids that prided themselves on having a perfect, or damn near perfect, attendance record at school. Not really sure why in hindsight, but at the time it seemed like it was important. Somehow I managed to maintain that throughout most of my life, and really didn't ever have an even somewhat serious illness until early in college, and even that was fairly minor. But since this past summer, it seems I hopped on the roller coaster of autoimmune death at some twisted carnival corpus.

I won't bother with all the nasty details, except to say that it began with a wicked case of shingles (basically adult chicken pocks) that taught me a new lesson in the meaning of pain, and which passed through various stages including plaque dermatitis, infection, inflammation, and hopefully now ending with reactive arthritis--a painful and particularly annoying problem that basically threw off the entire left hemisphere of my body since early December. Needless to say, my autoimmune system has been nearly non-existent, and I've probably spent more time in bed the last month and a half that I have in the last 5 years. Not fun...not that I don't like lounging in bed, but laying in bed and finding every movement painful is not my idea of a good time. And it makes for an even worse vacation.

But one of the upsides of this all is the feeling that I have taken too many things for granted, in this last case my health generally--and mobility specifically, and the value in enjoying them mixed with the danger in taking them for granted. Overall, a powerful reminder to reflect on our own mortality and fragility as a species, but perhaps more importantly, a good chance to think about how to do things differently.

One of my resolutions out of all this is to do more writing, blogging, journaling, etc. and get back into the habit of using my brain and my idea and my...pen?...keyboard...more productively. So with that in mind, look forward to more regular writings here in the months to come.

yeah!