DAY 024 -- "Two Leapfrogs"

Bad day today.

I should qualify that, because I did ride the Harley to work on this gorgeous summer day, and any time spent atop that rolling potato-potato beauty is a good one. So, I’ll qualify my opening:

It was a bad good day.

The joy of the ride aside, the rest of the day was a poopy head. No, not literally, just a juvenile, tantrummy, woe-is-me pity-party. A real wah-wah-wah kind of day, dipping into misery like a sponge.

So, naturally, by the end of the day I was waterlogged and couldn’t stop crying. Yes, even though the bike rumble-purred perfectly and never left me hanging.

Specifics?

--- Radiation rash on my chest/neck that only constantly burned when I breathed, Doc.

--- Sore throat particularly acky-gritty today, but only when I swallowed or thought about swallowing, or if I wrote a rough draft self-help column on how to swallow without using your mouth or throat, or when I looked at my reflection out back in the puddle pond, or when I shifted into sixth gear, or when I stopped to watch the porch hummers darting at the feeder like sparklers.

Okay, okay, I know that’s pushing it, but you get the idea. It hurt.

--- A nagging internal plumbing problem that would bring the Maytag repairman back from the dead.

--- A feeling that I’m taking two steps up and two leapfrogs back. 

--- A blast of humility, when I thought of so many others who are suffering so much worse than me, and wanting to wave that all-magic career nursing healing wand (the one that works, even when it doesn’t) and take us all out for banana splits.

Diane came home, caught me blubbering, and when I wailed my list of today's achy-breakies, did the right thing at the right moment: held me silently, let me sob it out, then asked if I wanted some slurpy, friction-less mac ‘n cheese for supper and a scratchless, easy slider-swallowing Jell-O chaser for dessert.

Topped with a soothy-smoothy banana split.

I’m a lucky man.

More as we go, El