Gratitude Is Just Down The Hall

For the last few days I’ve been fighting a bad urinary track infection with a high fever and the other painful side effects that accompany that condition. I’ve been miserable and it isn’t over yet. I passed up the option to go to urgent care or the ER over the weekend because those options have become a special misery of their own. I called my doctor four minutes after his office opened yesterday, explained the symptoms and asked for the appropriate antibiotic prescription. He knows I’ve had a reoccurring problem with this condition so he was willing to phone in the prescription without seeing me. That simple process took 10 hours. Apparently there were a lot of miserable people in his line yesterday. If I’d gone to his office, got in that line, and paid my co-pay, I would have left with the Rx in hand in much less time. I thought I was saving us both some time.

A couple of observations: medical care has gotten very impersonal. Like almost everything else that involves a personal service, what often matters the most is the feeling that someone is actually providing us a personal service. The personal touch is what puts the “care” in medical care. Otherwise, it’s just medical treatment. It’s just business.

We bring a lot of our misery on ourselves. Recently, I’ve been drinking very little water. Last week I was thinking that I’d better get back in the habit of keeping a good flow of cleansing water running through the system. Now, I’m paying the price for my neglect. Yesterday I had headache that lasted all day. Nothing in our medicine cabinet would knock it down. It was, I believe, a caffeine withdrawal headache. I felt so bad yesterday morning that I didn’t want to make myself any coffee, not to mention the fact that I didn’t want any form of diuretic sending me “down the hall” more often than absolutely necessary. This morning I wanted the headache to go away, so I made some coffee. The headache is gone. I’ll deal with going down the hall when necessary. Tell me that isn’t a stupid way to live. Like the quintessential philosopher, Pogo, said, “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”

Health matters. Most of us take it for granted that each day we’re going to get up and be free of pain and illness. As a result, we’re not grateful for that condition-free condition. But, as soon as we get hit with pain or poor health then we’re immediately grateful for its absence. Right now, I’d like nothing more than to be able to step into the bathroom without dreading what lies ahead. I come out of there grateful if the experience was just a little less painful than the prior trip. I plan on being immensely grateful when it’s once again pain free.

Why can’t we be grateful every day for the absence of things? We’re always thankful when we get better; why can’t we be thankful when we don’t need to get better? Like I said, I plan to be very thankful in just another day or two. But I need to plan to be thankful in another week or two, month or two, year or two. Maybe being thankful will spur me to drink more water and less coffee. Maybe being thankful will improve my health and well being. I think I’ll give it a try.