On Vacation

I can feel it!

My life over the last 5 days has been a haze of pain and drugs. A problem tooth in my mouth has reacted rather strongly to the concept of me being on holiday. To the extent that my gums, my top jaw, my lip, my nose, and cheeks have swollen! My top lip got so big at one point that its inside had rolled outside. It even got sunburnt, which is not surprising considering that it has never seen the sun except for the reflections off my teeth!

Right now I feel as if I have the worst head cold ever, have gotten terribly sunburnt on my face, and have been hit in the face with a baseball bat. That’s probably an under exaggeration! I feel much worse than that!

I am very lucky that I do not feel pain...

But this I can feel...

It has however given me time to pause and I am a little surprised at some of the gems of insight that have come to the fore. So instead of writing about my holiday woes, I will beguile you will some of my new hallucinated pearls of wisdom!

1. I have not been able to smile in days. As a result, I have this feeling that I am unhappy. Truth be told, I am rather unhappy. The thing is that smiling often makes a bad situation better somehow, whether it be the hormones released by one’s body or the purely psychological reaction of one’s mind to smiling. I miss smiling; it certainly helps make bad things bearable!

2. Intense pain saps ones inner resources. It must take a super human effort for any cancer, or any other painful disease sufferer to get up every day and work through debilitating pain. This has to be especially difficult when there is no end in sight. For the first time in my life, I have considered how difficult it is to wake every morning, if one slept at all, and face another day of painful life. I have never understood how anyone could chose to die rather than live out the gift of their life. Now I have an inkling of how terrible this kind of life can be. Whilst I still cannot condone ending one’s life, I certainly have a huge respect for those who chose to continue living out each day of pain, and then doing it with a smile! Respect!!

3. Time has become incredibly important for me. Weird considering that I do not wear a watch. I cannot believe how I have hungered for the end of each four hour interval of my day so that I can get my next pain relief fix. At first, the pain medication lasted about an hour, and then the next three hours were spent chewing on ice and dunking my head in the ice machine. At long last, pain medication is now lasting longer than four hours at a time. However, I now have an inkling of how a drug user must feel; how life revolves around that next high. My next high is really just a semblance of normality. For a druggie; I guess the high become their semblance of normality too. How difficult it must be for an addicted person to give up their fix. I won’t have to work too hard to rid myself of these drugs once my tooth issue is resolved. I can think of nothing worse than getting rid of the drugs that give me the grasp on reality that I crave.

4. Life goes on whether you want to be in it or not.

5. I have realised how blessed we are to have life within us. Our very health, the thing we most take for granted, is so fragile, and yet an incredible gift. We should never ever forget this!

6. Two years ago, I set myself a number of tough life goals. One of them was to run 2 half marathons in less than 100 minutes each. I have snagged an invite to the Knysna half marathon on Saturday, my big chance to tick off half a goal and prove myself. This episode has left me with a clear understanding that life has more to offer than the goals I set it. That perhaps the real value of life is in living out each moment, and not meeting the arbitrary measurements that I have set to it. If I run on Saturday or not, I will need to take it as it comes. If I do run, I need to enjoy the race as opposed to my challenge. If I meet my challenge at the same time, well then it was a bonus that was meant to be!