It’s been a few weeks since I have been able to look outside myself for any period of time due to health issues. Nothing with deadly consequences mind you, but enough to make me wonder if it was time to get ready to pay the piper. As horrible as it sounds it was a cold. Just a cold. Except it wouldn’t go away. Dec 18, 2012 I finally went to the doctor rather embarrassed to walk in and say, “I have a cold.”
Doc says, “I hear chest sounds lower right quadrant (he knows I am a nurse) so let’s do an x-ray and depending on results I may have to order medication.” I was impressed that in this day of madly writing prescription physicians who are overburdened by our health system and who just need to push on to the next patient, this man sat back and said what he did. I thought this quality kind of health care was long gone. AND he was a younger doctor!
Long story short I get a call I have right lower lobe pneumonia (something I have never had before) and can pick up a prescription at my pharmacy. The ten day supply seemed to go on forever but by the end I was all ‘Yeahhhh I am healed’.
That is until two days later when I awoke coughing and sneezing. I couldn’t, wouldn’t, believe I had a cold so spent another two weeks convincing myself it was a figment of my imagination before relenting and heading back to the clinic. This time definitely bronchitis, also something I have never experienced. More antibiotics. Ten more days. Yesterday I returned to the clinic on my last day of this round of meds. Chest clear but my cough sounds, as someone said, like it comes from the soles of my feet. Follow up x-ray to ensure all is clear and puffers to take for a few days. Good grief. These were meds I gave out for years to patients, mostly the elderly. Was it possible I was now ‘elderly’? Yikes!
But none of this is the point of my post. Now that I am securely back in the land of the living, and I am not sure if that is something that is ever ‘secure’ I started looking around at the world around me. What is going on?
The Pope resigns – unusual since it is the first time it has happened in 600 years, but later that night lightening is photographed striking the Vatican not once but twice. To paraphrase one comedian who said, “It looks like his Boss is not happy with his resignation.”
Asteroid2012 DA14 – buzzed earth then continued its cosmic cruise. It came a little too close for comfort I think at 27,600 km away. I consider our moon pretty close at 239,000 odd miles so this asteroid flew closer than some of our satellites. This guy weighed 143,000 tons. How do they know that? Are there interstellar weigh stations these objects but stop at, much like truckers on our highways? That baby may be much smaller than the one that supposedly ended life for the dinosaurs but it could still have done considerable damage wiping out about 2,000 square km *Associated Press. But while everyone was watching this spectacular show the cosmos had a bigger surprise for us.
Meteor Explodes – While all eyes were turned to our expected cosmic company a meteor speculated to be about the size of a bus but weighing 7,000 tons blazes across the Siberian sky exploding before hitting our little blue marble, but the resounding explosion which equals about 20 Hiroshima bombs caused incredible damage to buildings and people. Had it not exploded prior to actually hitting the earth, the press (and we all know we can trust what they say) said that the result would have been similar to the destruction shown in some fiction movies. I don’t doubt it. We never knew this meteor was coming, and the only reason we had any warning on the asteroid is that it was discovered not too long ago by a dentist whose hobby is looking ‘out there’.
I am surprised that all the folk who forecast the end of life December 21, 2012 have not come forward saying, “This is the beginning of the end.” Of course there is always someone out there making forecasts, and while some may not believe, you just never know.
There is nothing mankind can do to change the way the universe functions. We don’t control space. Heck, half the time we can’t control our own immediate inner space. I figure that the best we can do is to live well remembering the Golden Rule, accept the miracle of our existence, whether Science or Creation based, and get on with it.
Except of course for those days when micro bugs take over and force us to have a ‘Benylin Day’ or two, or three.
bridgesburning 