It's Ground Hog Day (six more weeks of winter, by the way according to the furry guy), and I feel like I am caught in the Bill Murray movie--you know the one in which every day is the same. I have been fighting this bug for ten days now, and I just wish it would go away. Every day feels remarkably like the one before--filled with coughs, scratchy throat, no voice and lackluster energy. Sorry to be a whiner--I hate to complain, but the time line of illness is absolutely suffocating in its repetition and oh so very boring.
Which actually brings me to the reading for the week in my class, all of which centered on the very theme of time in illness and how the perspectives differ from patient to practitioner. The well meaning doctor may recite the standard length of time it takes to recuperate from say, a broken arm ("You need to keep that arm immobile for six to eight weeks"), without realizing that he has prescribed an eternity to the poor kid who has to sit out basketball and perhaps, some of baseball season. To the doctor it is one appointment--when he next sees this patient, the cast will come off. To the patient, it sounds like a lifetime in exile from the activities that matter.
And while the doctor is right in telling the truth, perhaps it needs to be tempered just a little bit. "I know that seems like forever, but it really will happen," he might suggest. Or maybe not. Time is a tricky dimension in illness--when you are trapped it doesn't seem to change. When you are well; there doesn't seem to be enough of it.
All of which makes Barbaro's long convalescence even more impressive, from the point of view of those who care for and about him. His world might not have changed from day to day and while this may have been an endless source of frustration for Gretchen Jackson in particular, who hated to see him "cooped up in that stall," it was the classic no news is good news scenario. The more things stayed static, the better his chance for recovery. It was when things started to deteriorate--rapidly--that the walls came crashing down and all of a sudden those boring, cooped up days seemed awfully good.
I think I am getting better--a new regime of antibiotics is bound to help--and maybe when I do feel like my old self and get caught in the whirlwind of doing too much in too little time, I will miss these days of less activity. But right now, I can't help but wish that the calendar page would change.
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From the perspective of an older woman whose mind is healthy, and aches to be freed from a chronic illness injected into my body by an almost invisible insect, the Deer Tick, those days when, for some unknown reason, Lyme Disease releases its hold on me for a few hours, I am reminded just how precious health really is.
When folks use the expression, "at least you have your health", there is no "at least' about it at all. When for the few hours when for some reason, I feel almost like my former self, the contrast between illness and health is jarring. I tend to get "busy" when I have the energy I get involved in all those nagging chores around the house, keeping busy, without taking the time to really enjoy feeling "good." It can be hard to sit still and just be with what is.
After the many months of confinement to his stall, when the time came that Barbaro was able to go outdoors and graze, I can only imagine the joy he experienced. Once again for a few moments he was able to breathe fresh air, to watch the cows, cats and other animals on the hospital grounds, and be just a "regular" horse, doing what horses love to do, eat and feel the warmth of the sunshine on their bodies.
But Barbaro lived in the moment, as most animals do. Animals have that special gift of not dwelling in the past, or projecting into the future. They are in the now!
I need to find that gift in me, so that every moment is felt. . . Perhaps my inability to return to my previously over active life is the opportunity for me to learn how to really "live the moment."
That being said, I hope you are feeling better!
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