What is it that makes us think that we’re so indestructible when we start to feel better after an illness? We’re like Wolverine with our adamantium skeleton and mutant ability to heal almost immediately or like Mike Tyson when his only given opponent was a dude who didn’t live inside Mike’s head. It’s a high that rivals about all others.
I’m wont to say sometimes that there are few highs like the high we feel when we’re about to get off work, those last 15 minutes, when we tidy up those few last odds and ends, the only things standing between us and the return of our greater level of freedom. And that’s true; I know of no high that equals it.
Getting better after being so ill as to be saddened, however, is even better, or at least it is if the one of we is me and I have been upstairs alone on a canvas futon for 30 or so hours throwing up and defending my affinity for the queen of soul. By the time Kathy left at six or so I was beginning to feel that way, at least in my mind. My body wasn’t quite there, but that’s not where the high is born; any good addict or alcoholic will tell you that the euphoria can only become a body thing because it’s a mind thing first.
I ate lightly. I ate a piece and a half of dry wheat bread and about a half of can of tuna, and then I ate something else a little later, don’t recall what. And I did stuff; I don’t recall what I did, but I did do things. At one point–that was probably around 8:30 or 9:00–I had such an elevated opinion of how well I had progressed–and a hankering to eat something that tasted good no doubt–that I decided it would be a good idea to make some cookie-brownies. I’ve learned since that these are commonly referred to as “brookies,” but I already use that word to refer to brook trout, so I’ll stick with cookie brownies.
They didn’t taste any better than the toast and tuna, no matter what you call them.
Then, just when one might have noted what a madcap and fool I was to have thought it a good idea to make and bake any combination of cookie and brownie, I came up with the grandaddy of elevated progress opinions, when I decided that going for a run was a good idea.
Don’t misunderstand, we have a rather nice and once cushy treadmill, which stands in the corner of the living room, offset by the 46 inch tv, but even if I wasn’t going to go out and sludge up and down the mountain roads and trails, anyone could have told you that a run of any distance, on whatever contraption, was a bad idea.
And not only did I run, but I stayed on that treadmill–walking and jogging–for an hour while I watched one of the many movies I would wind up watching over the next two days. I didn’t do any part of it fast, and I wound up only making it 3.6 miles; still, I was on it for an hour.
After my shower, I weighed myself. I had been 146 or so before I got sick, and after the sweating from the run, I had maintained the 142 that I’d weighed ten or so hours earlier when I’d taken my shower before the trip to the doctor. That couldn’t be a bad thing.
At that time I was still feeling pretty well, but if I wasn’t beginning to feel ill again at that point, I would be at a point not much later. It appeared that I’d done a 180, and I was headed back to Sicktown.
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