In Sickness and In Health

Sick and in pain all day yesterday.  Took lots of Tylenol for the pain and it helped.  Took two hot baths and two Xanax for the anxiety.  They helped, too.  But I slept fitfully and do not feel well this morning.  I'm on a liquid diet, so I feel a little weak.  It's abdominal pain, sometimes severe.  A slight temperature, chills.  I'm guessing (hoping) that it is flareup of diverticulitis.  Doctors give antibiotics for this, but I am hoping I can ride it out without them.  As I say, though, that is what I'm hoping.  What I think, hence the Xanax, is that I am dead.  I admire people who can shrug things off.

"It's nothing.  I'll be fine."

I go straight to the depths.  I cry.  Literally, not figuratively.  Maybe a little of each.  There is so much I like.  There are still things to do.  

I may spend another day in bed and on the couch.  Not sure yet.  I did some yoga stretches last night, and that seemed to help.  "The body loves a twist," said my longtime yoga instructor.  My new insight is that they should be gentle.  As should everything now.  Hard charging days are behind me.  It's a real shame.  It was really fun to go, go, go.  

Enough of that.  I just wanted to explain.  I'm not in the mood to write, but I can't seem not to.  I'm conditioned, I guess.  

If I could get beyond myself right now, I'd tell you how the national media is finally catching up to and verifying my observations.  Developers given the green light by my home state governors to build on marginal lands that should never have been built on, insurance companies unwilling to offer affordable policies, people eschewing flood insurance, and the cost of all that to tax payers--articles are now appearing.  And as I predicted, sinkholes are opening up around the state, too.  

Writing that was difficult, though.  I do not have it in me to concentrate right now.  

Lying alone in the night, anxious and unsure, I wish only to be cuddling with my own true love.  Selfishly, of course.  For in truth, who wants to deal with the suffering of another?  It is not what you think of when you think of love.  That is why they had to make you vow to love and cherish "in sickness and in health."  

"Wait!  What?  You mean I'm supposed to love and cherish someone who's unwell?"

"That's what you vowed."

Hospitals used to be better places.  They put you up, gave you meds to keep you calm, meds to help you sleep.  They fed you and came by often to see if you needed anything.  They didn't make you go home to take care of yourself.  You could linger like Hemingway after being wounded in the war.  He stayed and drank and fell in love.  

Hospitals are hideous places now.  

On the other thing. . .  I assume that is why so many people want to write their own vows.  That's just too big a commitment.  Still, the warmth of another body with whom you fit like spoons. . . .