Thoughts from the bathroom floor

Yesterday morning, while laying on the cool hardness beside my toilet, having already been betrayed by the hot bed, I tried desperately to think of some of the good things about being sick.

Here's what I came up with:

1) You get to see parts of your bathroom you never might otherwise. Hmmm...looks like the underside of the sink could use some cleaning.

2) It forces you to experience a day of what must be tantamount to those cleansing diets. C'mon, we all know that "cleansing" means many unpleasant trips to the bathroom.

3) You feel the support of all the people who care about you. Even if they still have the Peruvian habit of long conversations, which you'd rather not engage in at the moment.

4) The limits of your bravery are tested. Can I do my duty by drinking that water when I know by experience it will send my stomach into another wave of agonies?

5) It gives you a teeny, weeny perspective on the ongoing suffering of others. What would I do to get rid of this pain? What would I do to avoid its return? If my life depended on it? If someone else's did? In a living room chair it's rather easy to bargain with pain, your own or that of others, but when you must hold the matter closer to yourself and your present....


It was an altogether miserable day. And I still don't feel a hundred percent. But this might last, what? Three days? And at the same time there were people in Japan, and indeed people all over the world, whose pain will last for much, much longer than mine.

Sobering.

*picture taken by The New York Times