the good, the bad and the extremely irritating

"There is nothing better for them than to rejoice and to do good in one's lifetime; moreover, that every man who eats and drinks sees good in all his labor--it is the gift of God"--Ecclesiastes 3:12-13

"If a man should live many years, let him rejoice in them all, and let him remember the days of darkness, for they will be many."--Ecclesiastes 11:8

I came into this expecting that there would be good days and bad, but that's not quite the case. It's more like good and bad half hours.

I woke up today to a bad one. Over the last two days, an itchy rash has broken out all over my abdomen and shoulders. At around 4:30 this morning it suddenly overpowered the Caladryl I had rubbed on it four hours earlier, producing a sensation similar to that produced by a thousand ants crawling over one's body and chewing at the flesh. Karla had first seen the rash the night before, and made the sensible move of calling Dr. Iqbal, so I was able to get in to see her by nine. She'll probably put me on a steroid, but she wants a dermatologist to see me first, so I'll need to go in tomorrow.

From Dr. Iqbal's office, I drove out to Claremont to meet with Roland Faber, dashing manically into a shopping center restroom in West Covina to slosh on a fresh coat of Caladryl along the way. The meeting itself was an absolute pleasure. The ethics course I'll be teaching at Claremont beginning next month is to form a unit with his theology course, so we'll be working closely together over the next semester. I went into this first meeting aware (and intimidated by the fact) that he is unusually intelligent and comprehensive in his grasp of systematic theology, but was caught off guard to discover his warmth and the utter ease of being with him. I stuck around on campus to work on my syllabus and reading list, not noticing until I got home that the itching had not broken out the entire time. Interesting thing: I'm finding that productive work on something you love and want to give to the world has a certain therapeutic power of its own.

Another slathering of Caladryl before going to bed. This time the effect wore off after just two hours. The flesh-eating bugs were back, and with them a new awareness of a couple of minor sores on my lips and fingers, and increased swelling in my legs. I'm switching to Sarna cream for the remainder of the night to see if it works any better. In a few minutes I'll take another Benedryl and go back to bed.

But first I'm here, because if I restrict my blogging to the times when I'm physically comfortable it won't be a truthful account of this part of my life. And what do you know--the effort of writing about it has helped to make to make it manageable. I've nuked a mug of warm milk for myself, something I almost never do, but which has proven to be a remarkably good idea. So even this isn't a total waste.