Once in a While I Feel Beat Up

 

Once in a while I feel beat up. I mean I feel like I just lost a fight to Jackie Jones when I was eight years old and he did not fight fair. Today I'm thinking about the cataract surgery I had last week, and both the second cataract surgery and some other surgery to a private area i'll have n the next two weeks. I'm thinking about the hernia surgery, the three times they cut me from sternum to lower abdominal to fix a ruptured intestine, and the three operations to clean up the flesh eating bacteria on my leg. I'm thinking about the major operation I had on my mouth after a bad fall. I'm thinking about the minor heart attack, the malaria, the rheumatoid arthritis that put me in the hospital for months as a kid, and the hemmoragic dengue a couple of years ago.

I'm thinking about the baby bushmaster snake bite, the copperhead bite in my back yard a couple of years ago; I'm thinking of the fairly recent two anaconda bites that were not poisonous but inflicted serious damage to the nerves in my right hand, and the Brazilian wandering spider bite that nearly killed me.

I am thinking about bot fly infestations, vampire bat bites, bullet ant bites. I am remembering several broken noses from fights I lost badly, and a broken jaw. I am thinking about broken ribs and fingers, forearms and ankles.

And all the rest, from a cracked skull to wretched fungal infections in my legs, to 12 stitchings on my fingers and hands for various kitchen accidents over the years. Don't forget the failed kidneys, the collapsed bladder and so forth. The list is endless.

But while I really feel beat up today -- and my cigarettes are certainly part of the problem -- I am also thinking that man, I have had a time of it. I have loved, lost, loved again. I've discovered things. I've written stories that helped some people. I have laughed out loud. I've been here since the show started and I was not only in it, I was freaking complicit. And while I wish I was less beat up, I don't know that I could have lived my life in New York, Texas, and the Peruvian Amazon if I did not acquiesce to the dangers those places presented to me.

I am glad I did, even though right now, this minute, I wish I did not hurt so much.