win some, lose some

most people, when they hear this phrase, immediately jump to the idea of intermittent success, like a basketball team (say, our hometown Mystics) falling short of an undefeated season.  for my purposes, i would submit a different interpretation, which follows.

since my surgery, i've lost 23 lbs (32 total since beginning the pre-op diet), and i'm feeling pretty great...at least right now.  last weekend, i fell victim to a super-aggressive, sudden-onset sinus/ear infection, which required equally assertive antibiotics (in the form of that old standard, the Z-pak) to tame.  while i was at the walk-in clinic receiving both diagnosis and cure, the doctor asked me if i'd been hospitalized recently.  i told her about the little incident in Costa Rica, and she informed me that the human body is incredibly vulnerable in the weeks following a major surgery, because the immune system kind of gets stretched to its limits.  for this reason, it has become common practice for anesthesia teams to administer prophylactic antibiotics intravenously prior to the procedure (this happened to me, too), the idea being that they will serve as a buffer for any possible infection that might result from the incisions, etc.  this is all great, and i'm heartily in favor of such practices.  apparently, however, those supercharged IV antibiotics sort of check out once the procedure is over, leaving the immune system to fend for itself after about a week.  hence, the sinus infection i contracted met only nominal resistance when it attacked my body - something similar to what the German army experienced in April of 1940, when their invasion of Denmark was completed less than six hours later (the shortest military campaign of all time). 

in any event, while i was lying in bed last Sunday (praying for a swift departure from this world, if i'm honest), it occurred to me to be indignant that my body would respond to such a decisive action toward overall health (the surgery) with such unmitigated misery.  i couldn't believe it.  i had traveled thousands of miles in an effort to take control of a rapidly worsening situation and what did i get in return?  piles and piles of sodden Kleenex and a West African drum ensemble practicing in my face.  once my head cleared enough for me to analyze the situation somewhat more objectively, i realized that it's only natural; i had put my body through serious trauma (voluntarily, and without its consent), and in return, it was slavishly devoting all available resources to healing the affected areas, necessarily leaving others (like everything that wasn't my digestive system) critically vulnerable.

since i kicked the sinus infection, i've been feeling much better, though i'm told (by my devoted and wonderful Sue) it will take quite a while before i feel 100%.  my body seems to be bouncing back quite efficiently, especially since i've been able to consume the occasional food that requires chewing.  in any event, my point for today's entry is this: what happened to me is a natural expression of the order of things, and is easily applicable to the state of our Union at this moment.  while nearly $450 billion of our nation's budget is diverted to the war in Afghanistan (and the rebuilding, etc., of Iraq), other areas are necessarily suffering.  it's easy to speculate that we wouldn't be in a recession if we had never gone back into Iraq, lo those many years ago, and that our nation's economy would be booming along like China, and that our trade deficit would have been slashed in half by now, thanks to the diligence and fortitude of American manufacturing.  wouldn't it be nice?  the fact is, though, that this is still speculation - i'm sure, for example, that the Dept of Defense could have found something else to spend all that green on.

i'm not going to pontificate on what we should be doing, but I was struck by the correlation between my own experience and what i see in our country right now.  once my body decides that my digestive system is no longer in danger of oozing out of my pores, the balance will be restored (sinus germs beware!!).  i fear it will be a much longer time before the same can be said of the US - balance aside, how long before we remember to allocate some resources to rebuilding our own country?