“Who will save me from this body of death?”
I understand Paul’s lament. As sad travelers on this dizzying rock we call home, we occupy bodies that are bound for death. Our destiny is decay and our lot in life is sickness and pain. I’m overstating it a bit, but it’s my blog, and therefore – my privilege.
I would like to take a moment though, to dwell on this body of death I and all the rest of humanity is trapped in, and rundown briefly for the 12 of you who might be reading, the record of illnesses between my wife and I this year. Every December we sit down and review our year together. I can already tell that this year is marked by sickness. I keep reminding myself that in the world that is to come, there won’t be anymore sickness, and for this I am most grateful.
The year started off with sinus infections around February, if I’m remembering correctly. We shared those, and I don’t think either of us missed work. That was rather light and fine, but it went downhill from there.
She caught a cold shortly thereafter, and I resisted it through mountains of vitamin C, in as many forms as I could manage to shovel down my throat. Then there were the flus. I caught it first, it completely diminished my white blood count and kept me out of work for the better part of a week. Right when I started feeling mildly better, I passed the dreaded illness on to my wife, who was able to get to the doctor in enough time to get some newfangled medicine that cured her within 2 days.
In March, I found myself in the emergency room with chest pains and respiratory problems. I was also having an anxiety attack because of the two previously noted conditions, as I feared I was going to die before causing enough trouble on this earth to really be remembered. Turns out it was merely a flare up of some condition I can’t pronounce that is activated by extreme stress. I will likely have it the rest of my life, but I’ve decided not to allow myself enough stress to cause another flare up.
In April, shortly after her birthday, my wife landed herself a nice cushy room on the fourth floor of the hospital. She thought it was gas, I thought it was appendicitis, and the doctors determined it was Crohn’s disease. This has occupied a significant portion of our time, money and sanity over the remainder of the year. Our new chronic friend has brought us multiple CT scans, frequent visits to the GI doctor and a few particularly brutal illustrations of the treacheries of steroids on the human body.
Last night, we found ourselves in the emergency room again. This time, my lovely wife is having an allergic reaction to God-knows-what. Her eyes were puffy and red, and we thought it was pink eye at first, until she started having trouble breathing at 2 a.m. Incidentally, we exercise, eat healthy and don’t drink or smoke. Technically, we should not be this prone to illness. Unless of course, as the Bible is quite fond of pointing out, we live on a decaying planet in a body of death.