Yesterday, Tuesday, I received a text yesterday that our church administrator wouldn't be in; she had a 103 temp and was heading to the doctor. Turns out she has H1N1 flu and is out for the week and worse contagious for the Thanksgiving holiday… some holiday! Truth is she will be fine in a few days.
Today, my head feels like it will explode, I can barely talk, have a cough and… (you don't need the particulars). I'll head to the doctors as soon as they open. I doubt I have the flu more likely a sinus infection. If I am correct, I'll get a prescription and be feeling better by Friday, a nuisance the day before Thanksgiving but insignificant on the road of life.
I wondered what it would have been like for ether of us to have developed these illnesses last week? Would I have stayed the course eating only rice and beans? Or would I have abandoned that subsistence diet for a healthier one to help fight off the infection? Two guesses where my thoughts went next… (you should only need one).
I wondered what it would be like to come down with either of these sicknesses when my body was already in a compromised health state from lack of nutrition and when I had no choice but to eat a meager serving of rice and beans. I wondered what it must be like to have your head pounding or a 103 temp and no doctor to see, no pharmacy with antibiotics, not even Advil or Tylenol in a medicine closet. It is no surprise that someone dies of poverty related causes every 5 seconds.
My concern is that until my rice and beans week, until I read "The Hole in Our Gospel" and "Too Small to Ignore" I never really thought about these things…
Literally as I was typing the last word above, my wife said, "Have you seen this?"
"Seen what?" And she began to play a YouTube video she just found on a friend's Facebook… I watched. It made me think some more about what I had just written about… I love God's timing. Check it out if you have 2 minutes and 39 seconds. It's called the Advent Conspiracy.
I think if I would have gotten this last week, I would have been more fortunate because I would have not wanted to eat. However instead what it showed me was with eating so little we are more susceptible to sickness. I cannot imagine not being able to run to the doctor to not get medicine, if I had not this would have been a lot worse, and I can't even imagine. At 103 degree temperature, I could not function, and in fact would have been happy for it to be my last day on earth, I felt that bad.
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