Take one freezing cold morning, make that a freezing cold Monday morning, then add a cough that just won’t go away and the remnants of the weekend’s fluey thing, what have you got? One set of challenging circumstances. Almost the perfect storm, you might say.
I like to think that, for my advancing years, I’m in pretty good shape. This cough however, is really getting a bit tedious, just ask my neighbours. So despite being a man, never taking medicine if I can help it, always letting nature take its course, I’m off to the doctors tonight.
I don’t mind, that she’s a lady doctor. She’s a professional and it won’t matter a jot to her, I’m just another sickly patient. I’m sure it’s fine, that she studied for her BSc Hons. in this millennium, that’s she’s younger than me, by a couple of decades probably, I’m sure new medical procedures are better than the old fashioned ones, aren’t they?
Now you know I’m kidding, right? My doctor will find out what is wrong with me and take steps to put it right. Never mind that the TV adverts and the posters in the surgery all say that if you’ve had a cough for more than three weeks, it might be cancer, it probably won’t be, but don’t tell me that right now.
Alright, so I’m not completely kidding. I’ve left getting this sorted out way too long and now that is worrying me. But isn’t it me who says that you should address an issue there and then, that leaving it just makes it bigger? Well here I am, hoist by my own petard, chanting for a fortuitous outcome, but wishing I had done something sooner. We will see.
Update ~ The doctor is pretty sure that it’s a simple chest infection … which is very good news.
To my annoyance, I have again spent most of the night trying, and failing, to stop coughing myself stupid. Despite doses of cough mixture and lemon flavoured cold and flu capsules, each time I lay down to sleep, that tickle came back and I found myself having to get up to stop the coughing fit.
So here we are again, the weekend is upon us and there is a spring in the step of people as they leave the office for a couple of days of well earned relaxation. Some are talking of shopping expeditions, others have Christmas trees to decorate, so much excitement.
The autumn colours have arrived here on the south coast, making today a great opportunity to get out into the watery sunshine and the soft warm air. A short trip over to Burley, a spot of lunch and then an early afternoon stroll in the midst of beautiful nature.
In one of his writings, renowned microbiologist René Dubos, stated. “History teaches that man without effort is sure to deteriorate; man cannot progress without effort, and man cannot be happy without effort.” This is indisputable.
Sometimes situations seem so painful, and we have so little control, that there is a real chance of losing hope. In the past, before I found Nichiren Buddhism, I might have struggled to cope with the pain and anguish that Charlotte has been suffering this past week.
Charlotte is not having a good time with this surgery at all. She is in a lot of pain, has tubes coming out of her, so can’t even get into a comfortable position, and is on a ward with other women who are also suffering post operative discomfort in various forms.
With my thoughts being dominated by Charlotte, and her slow and painful recovery from the latest surgery, whilst remembering that she is but one of my three children, I was reminded of this explanation, by Daisaku Ikeda, of a relevant parable from the Lotus Sutra.
Spending the majority of the day waiting for news regarding Charlotte’s latest, and hopefully last operation, on her path to defeating cancer, puts life’s priorities into proper order. The reconstruction procedure sounds almost barbaric, and worse even than the operation to remove the cancerous tissues in the first place.
The Search For Enlightenment 
Recents Comments