Laying Down My Bed and Running

Closing out a summer of heck on wheels, I’ve just arisen, miracle-like, from my deathbed. (Already I am reminded of Thoreau’s saying: “Jesus told the sick man to take up his bed and walk, and I should certainly advise the well man to lay down his bed and run.”) Actually I haven’t arisen so much as sat up.

It turns out my cheap digital thermometer measures temperature about one degree lower than it actually is -- so that time I thought I was fine because my temperature was only 102, it was actually 103. And when I started to get concerned that it wasn’t going down from 103, it was actually sitting up there around 104. This explains the fact that I’d get into a new set of pajamas and within seconds they would be soaked through with sweat. And then the long afternoons huddled up with my teeth chattering, wearing two sets of pajamas, under two down comforters, in 80-degree weather.

But what really interests me about illness are the hallucinations. Hey! It’s just like drugs! Except not fun! Well, I don’t do hallucinatory drugs, but people do do them because they’re fun, right? Not just ‘cause they mimic the interesting feeling of being on your deathbed?

So in the midst of my delirium I came up with a brilliant, breath-taking, gorgeous idea for something that could revolutionize the internet. It just came fully formed to me, just like that, in all its staggering clarity. Something that could transform the way we look at web pages and allow us to focus our attention on only the part that needed focusing on right at that exact moment. I held on to this precious idea for hours, afraid that I was too ill to remember it. But thank goodness, I did not forget it. I offer it to you in all its simple glory. It is -- you look at your internet screen through the tube from the middle of a roll of toilet paper. And then you can only see one little circle at a time! Wouldn’t that be -- different? Isn’t that an invention that only an ill person of stupendous insight could have devised?

Okay, there’s probably a reason people don’t make themselves ill just to achieve divine insight. But transformed states have a venerable history. What about the Sun Dance, where they basically injure themselves and dance around a pole until they achieve ecstatic insight? (What about a Herzog movie, which is much the same, including the injury?) What about the lovely book Bone Games, by Rob Schultheis, which is “a chronicle of the author's attempts to explain and repeat the exhilarating and mystifying sense of well-being and heightened consciousness that he experienced during a close brush with death”? If a toilet roll doesn’t count as heightened consciousness, well, you haven’t been spending enough time on your sickbed, sister.

Eventually I saw that I was not getting better on my own, and I crawled off to the doctor, who said, “Congratulations, you win the award for being the sickest person I’ve seen this week. That’s the kind of award you don’t want to win.” He gave me a whole new set of drugs (it turns out I have multiple illness agents, that’s how heightened my consciousness is). A friend was taking one of these in the hospital once, and she called the nurse over and said, “I don’t think I should be taking these drugs. They’re making me watch too many soap operas on the TV.” The nurse said, “What’s wrong with that?” My friend said, “The TV is not on.” I can’t say it’s had this effect on me yet, but I live in hope.

But the other truth about illness is that you really find out which friends are able to look at you in your state and what you need, and which get so disturbed by the whole episode that they basically say, “I can only deal with you if you don’t need too much.” My friend with cancer offered to bring some raspberries from the farmer’s market for me! But then there are the people who phone and I answer it, croaking with hoarseness: “I’m sorry, I’m really sick right now. I’ve been in bed for six days with a fever of 103.” And this really happened! They say: “Oh, you’re not sick! You have no idea! That’s nothing to what I had when I came down with so-and-so ...” Well, my heightened consciousness is not such that I don't want them to just keep quiet.

The thing is that sickness, both your own and other people's, is the ultimate demander of social capital. I came across the concept one day when asking some friends to help move my rug. I have a vast rug in the living room, a rug the size of Texas, and it creeps off the rug pad every year or two. So every year or two, I have to muster friends to help me move it back -- it requires several people. And one year a sociologist was one of those friends. And he opined that those times when we can't make it alone, like moving rugs, or being sick, help bind society together. They allow us to put social capital in the bank. We also put social capital in the bank when we send a get-well card or buy raspberries. Or even just offer to buy raspberries! I felt as warm and cared-for having my friend offer as if I had actually eaten the raspberries. And when it comes our turn to be needy, we have social capital we can withdraw from.

I know the self-absorbed people who can't hear that anyone else is ill just want their due, and most likely feel as if they've been so ignored for so many years that they're right never to look outward again. But if you don't have an account at the bank, things can be hard. And if they insist on telling me how my illness can't beat theirs for drama, just see if they get a free beta model of my toilet-roll internet-gazing device.