Tuesday 7 February 2023

Personal care physician and cardiologist have proclaimed me
sufficiently robust for major surgery. Could have told them that and
saved carfare and Florida taxpayers a couple bucks. Suppose this pre-
op procedure provides assurance for more skittish or marginal patients,
but is completely irrelevant if one doesn't wake up afterward.
Probably wouldn't provide much comfort to friends and family either.
Perhaps more for doctors to keep malpractice insurance premiums, which
are outrageous due people who sue and win for hangnails and poor
bedside manner, from being impossibly excessive.

Monday (after six days of slacking)

Last day of freedom from pain, loss of mobility and possible death on
the table. OK, that last is a negligible threat, but sounds
wonderfully dramatic. In fact the whole process is great,
enthusiastically anticipated to thwart dislocations and provides an age
related perspective on tolerance. Babies let the world know that
Armageddon is upon them if given the wrong pacifier and college
students are increasingly outraged by any suggestion they have agency
over their own lives. Prolonged experience tends one toward
accommodating reality and normalizing discomfort. There are, of
course, the curmudgeonly Q-tips (note offensive term for older adults)
who kvetch about everything, but the grizzled friends we hang out with
(out with whom we hang?) have more often learned that feeling nearly
anything is better than feeling nothing and life is a grand and
glorious prank.

"Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving
safely in a pretty and well-preserved body, but rather to skid in
broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly
proclaiming: Wow - what a ride!"
- Hunter S. Thompson

"I like life. It's something to do."
- Ronnie Shakes

Jack & Jan