Having a name for why I felt lousy helped. My sluggishness increased over the weekend until it seemed prudent to go the the emergency room. Some of my logic, if you can call it that, was that my last time to do so was in 1989. Surely I was not being dramatic if I indulged in medical care. I recall having the same reasoning when John spiked a high fever and lay shivering under six blankets in August. Turns out he had malaria. 

The nurses seemed caring enough, though their patient load kept them too busy to talk with me. Maybe there wasn't much to say except it's not your turn yet. Crying may have moved the line a bit, since I was right there in the hall and everyone could see me. I tried to sob quietly, unlike the man in the room next door who was shouting all kinds of threats for the lack of care. He got attention after that. 

Eventually they took me for a cat scan, and four hours later gave me a diagnosis. Hearing it helped erase my regret for coming in in the first place. Plus it was a non communicable disease, which given the culture wars of the last three years is a plus. Diverticulitis is a word that has crossed my path before, though I never knew the gory details. John was kind enough to bring me home, and made me a smoothy with no gut irritating ingredients. 

It is not lost on me that there are good people who would gladly trade their condition for mine. Ten days of pills will likely calm my colon down. The organ I have given not the slightest appreciation for, in over six decades of eating. Twelve hours of uncertainty is not an exorbitant price for such an outcome. While I lay there, I thought about people waiting for immigration status, for airplanes, for the right job. I prayed for them as a collective group of life's weary travelers, which was another intention for my pre Easter energy. It turns out that even a crowded ER is not incompatible with prayer and gratitude,