A couple of weeks ago I got some kind of stomach virus where I was vaguely nauseous, but primarily the bug expressed itself on the other end. And since I work from home, my toilet became my office chair, which led me to contemplate the lack of back support toilets provide for long periods of sitting, and likewise the lack of poop-ability that office chairs provide. An ideal solution (and big-time moneymaker) would be a toilet with wheels and lumbar support (which AI created for me above).
One of the nice side effects of my stomach bug was that I lost my appetite almost entirely, so I’m finally dropping some pounds. For days, food didn’t sound good and when I did manage to eat, I became full after just a few bites. And I’m usually an overeater, which I blame on my mother never letting her children leave the table until every single morsel on our plates had been devoured.
But with this miracle virus, which I never did have diagnosed, I would have an orange and three raspberries and feel like I couldn’t stomach so much as a raison for dessert (I also felt like eating fruit more than meat, which is very out of character). As the days went on, I would eat a little more, and a little more, but I’m still not quite back to my usual self, which in full form would be something akin to riding one of those slow moving miniature kiddie trains around a buffet loop, shouting at the conductor to slow to a crawl each time we passed the prime rib and ham station (prime rib, please!).
But this is all beside the point and the real revelation I had, which is that no one likes being sick, and that when you’re sick, sleeping is the sweetest relief. And so I was thinking, since it is often said that sleep is the best medicine, why isn’t there some kind of way to just go to sleep whenever you get sick, and then wake up when you’ve kicked it, whatever it is? There’s a pharmaceutical for nearly everything, after all, and America, for all its healthcare inadequacies, has at least to its credit the most expensive medical technology.
And so can science not just knock us out for a day or two or several years, depending on our illness? And then, because sleep is the best medicine, we wake up feeling ok, if a little atrophied (it seems like maybe you could have people exercise your body for you while you are out, if you have good health coverage).
But I suppose for some of us the definition of sickness and the criteria for when induced sleep is prescribed could blur, and the sleeping cure could be overused. Would existential angst be reason enough to let unpleasantness have its seat in the back row of this theater of despair called life? If so, many of us might never wake. “Put me under, doc, and wake me up when sustained happiness is available.”
But I suppose that is life, isn’t it? You have to be awake for it, otherwise it’s not really living (This is why babies and puppies who sleep 18 hours a day are no-good cheaters). Besides, no one said it wasn’t going to hurt. In fact I’m pretty sure entire religions are founded on pain and suffering as either a fact of life or the very means of redemption (for the good times you enjoyed). So next time you’re sick, be sure to set an alarm clock. You don’t want to miss the pain of being alive, or those moments in between.
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