Healing the Man and the Machine

I’ve lived with a chronic illness for a little over two years now. Lately it’s gotten worse, which accounts for the missed work days and the missed blog posts.

I can honestly say that the last few weeks have been some of the most difficult in my life. Not quite at the top of the list, but close enough.

Fortunately, I started on a new combination of meds last Tuesday (the seventh such attempt) and for now at least, it seems to be working. I’m in a lot less pain. Work is starting to feel possible again. Hope returns.

By an odd coincidence, my computer had also been getting worse lately. You’d boot up, and it would work for an hour or two, then slow down and lock up completely. I did a lot of rebooting. Finally I gave up on it and switched to using the PC in the family room, which we use more as a Netflix TV than a normal computer. I was sitting on the floor a lot, typing hunched over the keyboard. Not great for your back.

My friend (and local mad genius) Paul suggested extreme measures: reinstall the operating system from scratch. Yesterday I took his advice and embarked on the five-hour voyage of downloading and installing Windows 7.

It seems to have worked. I’m typing this on my old computer again, with no signs of the issues from before.

A healed computer, a healing body. Two things I’m very grateful for. It’s amazing how illness can change you, darken your world, contract the borders of your private universe into a little walled-off circle of pain. It’s amazing how feelings like hope and despair are so connected to getting the right combination of chemicals in the pills you take.

I’m a lucky man.

I don’t know how long this recovery will last. The illness has always been cyclical before, and it could be that I’m just in another temporary upswing. It feels different this time, but maybe it’s not. We’ll see.

In the meantime: I’m glad to be back.