Sometimes the Only Way to the Other Side of Something Is Through It

Hi. I'm okay. Thanks for asking. That may scan as me being more flip than I intend to be and I apologize for that. Please take it for the plain statement that it is.

So what happened? The short version is that I've had some health scares over the past few weeks and have been on meds that didn't play well with each other. Before I could get a handle on what was happening to me, I got very sick. It's a shock to me, too. Twelve years of working with people who are usually on meds of some sort and learning about them by both design and osmosis should have given me enough insight to know that bad interactions can slam you even when there isn't a psychotropic or inhibitor in sight.

It's one thing to know on an intellectual level how much your physical health can influence your state of mind. It's another entirely to see it work and accept it on a more primitive, experiential level. Knowing the effect the meds had on me together and then working out by process of elimination which one was knocking me flat was pretty amazing. BTW, it was my BP pill. Taken by itself, it caused me to get dizzy, foggy, anxious and eventually throw up everything but my shoes. Buh-bye big horse pill.

I should have known better. After all, I calm people in distress and fix bad health care situations for a living. Why didn't I see this? If it's any help, I have been missing the big picture for years. I didn't see (or maybe didn't want to see) that neglecting my emotional and physical health was taking a toll and probably lost sight of that at least two years ago. Things that would have never bothered me that much, things that I could have been zen about, things that I would have laughed off after finally getting some perspective and emotional maturity were suddenly the very triggers that seemed to get me down and keep me down. I know my friends and family noticed this. Somehow I missed it, or ignored it. Whichever it was, I was too busy to care.

What is scary is how easy it is to get accustomed to not being well. I didn't realize just how much I had manifested that in my life until I decided to get in shape to play hockey and found out that I was not only out of shape but scarily unhealthy. That was the first time in a long time I had paid any attention to my body and found out I had been depriving myself of everything that was good for me for a long time. My biggest fear is that I have let myself get as sick as my father did before he died. I love him and miss him but he was never willing to do what it took to stay healthy. It seems like over the past few months I've thought back to the decisions he made and then ran as hard as I could in the opposite direction. I hope it's enough and yet fear it won't be. There's so much that I still want to do and want to be able to do it before I'm too old.

So. I have a lot to think about. I have a lot to do. Most important of all right now, I need to say thank you for caring. If you wrote me, I will answer you. Please be patient and don't think your letter was deleted. And I'm sorry to have caused anyone to worry. Everyone has their own set of things to deal with and adding to those lists is not something I want to do. Hey, I'm a fixer, not a fixee.

As we used to say at the end of every Latin class:
valeo valui valiturus


Jas Faulkner