Day: January 17, 2014

I’m always uncomfortable sharing details of illness on the Internet, there usually a stream of good and loving and comforting messages, a stream of unwanted medical advice and diagnoses, and then some horror stories people feel obliged to share. But this is the Internet, this is the meaning of sharing a life, this is the responsibility of my commitment to being open. I am not open about everything, there are many details of my life that I do not share, but you can’t just share the good, you have to share the bad as well up to a point, that is what a life is, what a life means.

If I’m laid up for a few days, I need to share that.

I have been very sick the past couple of days – acute nausea and weakness and other symptoms I’ll skip, the thinking is that it is viral gastroentitis, perhaps triggered by some of the diabetes medications  I am taking. As we all know, there are always side affects with medications, always, and so this is my turn. This is something new, it is pretty awful.

This is a fairly wicked thing to have, I’ve been in bed all day and up all night being sick. it is not a pretty or a neat illness, Maria is of course, wonderful to me, and she is an angel to have around. Right now she’s making me some applesauce, saltine crackers, yoghurt, some brown rice if I can handle it. In the morning, I might try some anti-nausea medication. I’m lucky in many ways.

This is the glorious and wondrous challenge of life, to soar past your Kickstarter funding goal one day, to be on your butt the next trying to keep some applesauce down. Dehydration matters with diabetes, if I can’t control it myself I’ll have to get some help over the weekend, I’m in touch with my very excellent nurse-practioner.

So there it i, in keeping with my pledge to be open, a cornerstone element of my blog. My plan is to be graceful, appreciative of Maria’s hard work, cognizant of the much worse suffering people endure with much worse illnesses. And to get well quickly, so I can resume my life and work. I’ll be in touch.

Got hit with something nasty in the night and am in bed for a bit. I’ll be silent for a bit. FYI, have raised $10,936 so far on my Kickstarter project Talking To Animals. Thank you.

Sunrise is something of a cliche, I think, so are sunsets, but the thing about cliches is that most of them are cliches because there is truth to them. When I was grappling with a great deal of fear, sunrise was important to me. I saw each sunrise as a windshield wiper, clearing away the fear and resentment and confusion of my life. I heard the thump-thump of the wipers in my head, and this farm – I think it is the most beautiful farm – always speaks to me of the need to move forward, to accept the notion of the brighter tomorrow. Then, just a few years ago, I did not think I would survive, not me, my mind, my life, my work.

And since then, I have grasped the power of new beginnings, my life has filled with riches. This morning, off to get my eyes checked, to get some good reading classes for my computer, to meet with Mannix Marketing and plan for my video welcoming people to the website and offering an up-to-date tour of the life and animals of Bedlam Farm – it will be available to everybody.

Then I think I might end up in bed. Tomorrow, stomach bug permitting, a jaunt to Brattleboro to shop at Sam’s, to get some new denim shirts, suspenders and jeans. Life happens, the living room chimney has too much creosote build-up, getting it scoured out tomorrow.