One Fine Day

Today’s post is about yesterday, one fine day. Such a day can be a weekly occurrence for me. Usually, it is a Thursday or Friday. This week, it was yesterday.

A cocktail of medication–my weekly dose–makes these days a possibility but not a guarantee. And for a while, that seemed enough.

Then, I was in the process of replacing hip joints with shiny, new metal and reinforcing the vertebrae in my neck with fusion hardware. “Putting Humpty back together again” as my neurologist said.

Daily yoga is increasing my strength as my body adjusts to metal. It is my energy that continues to run from low to lower. Increased mobility results in restlessness.

Impermanence feels imminent.

As my neighbor Grace commented yesterday, “just when everything seemed settled and certain.” We were discussing our increasing concerns with the management of our apartment complex.

Grace and I have been neighbors for seven years.  We share a common wall and are diligent in our respect for each other’s life. As Grace says,” It just makes a difference if you know the person on the other side of the wall.”

Because I was having a fine day, I chose to spend some of it with Grace. What better way to celebrate fineness than with a woman of wisdom and wit. It was energy well spent but not without cost.

Being chronically ill is like a living with an extortionist. The payments never end and without notice, the cost soars whether or not there is a change in a weekly cocktail.

To seek more than one fine day is not without risk. Experience has shown me a change in cocktail can mean weeks before there is another fine day.

I may be beyond the time in my life that there is more than one fine day per week. It feels selfish to pursue, as if I am lacking in gratitude.

Yet, I am a risk taker–always have been–I’m not likely to settle for somewhat satisfactory. Not likely at all.

“When the lights of health go down” is to “discover countries” previously unknown (Virginia Woolf). This is the adventure in illness, discovering distant perspectives still pure and untried.

So “it becomes strange indeed that illness has not taken its place with love, battle, and jealousy among the prime themes of literature” (Woolf).

Truly, there is no emigrating from the land of chronic illness but there is the illusion of escaping the energy extortionist, if just for a day. Sometimes, it comes with grace.

Aim for Even posts offer equanimity a dose at a time. No day or dose is ever the same, even if the aim is. You may read about the origins of Aim for Even here or on this site’s About page.