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It takes so little Looking for SignsBy Rick Horowitz
As headaches go, he'd seen far worse -- if not in his own head, then certainly in his own home. Over the years, he'd seen people he cared about knocked absolutely flat for days at a time, totally unable to function. This new headache of his wasn't anything like that. It was uncomfortable, yes, but in the general scheme of things, it was no big deal, and neither was the stomachache that came with it. Which is precisely what he told himself when it all began. Convincing himself -- that night, and especially the next day -- was something else again. The world is different now. He's on high alert. When the headache started -- this was just a few nights ago, not long after dinner -- it was a dull pain right behind his eyes. As the evening grew later, the painful part grew larger, and stronger; he popped a couple of ibuprofen and waited for relief. That's the way he'd always dealt with headaches: ibuprofen or Tylenol or aspirin. (He could never remember from one time to the next which one worked best for him.) An hour later, he'd be fine. But not this time. This time, the pain stuck around. It stuck around, and it continued to grow. He had to take off his glasses. He had to close his eyes. He'd been sitting up in bed, watching the World Series, but now he had to lie down, with his glasses off and his eyes closed, and listen to the World Series. When was the last time he'd done that? Never. But he still wasn't too worried about it. When the queasiness started -- he was already horizontal, had already taken his ibuprofen -- he wasn't entirely surprised. Headaches had done it to him before, made him sick to his stomach. He was too distracted to think much about it, to fret about the global implications, not even after his dinner exited the same way it had arrived. And then things started looking up. The household's headache honcho came bearing gifts: damp towels and ice packs for his forehead, and a dose of her very own prescription medicine -- the good stuff, the miracle stuff -- to replace the suddenly departed ibuprofen. It took a while, but it seemed to work. The pain and the nausea subsided, then disappeared. He felt exhausted, barely managing to stay awake through the end of the ballgame. And when it was over, he fell sound asleep without these words ever occurring to him: nasal swabs. That was the next day. If his headache was all gone, he found himself wondering the following afternoon, then why was he feeling queasy again? What's going on here? Which led him to consider what's going on there, and to remember -- not that he'd forgotten -- that he'd recently spent several days in one of the major theres, where even someone who had no apparent connection to infected envelopes or infected mailrooms had turned up sick. Had turned up dead. What were the chances that somewhere during his visit, he'd also been in the wrong place at the wrong time? The chances were minuscule. But what were the consequences if in fact he had been? Potentially catastrophic. He'd heard all about emergency rooms bursting at the seams with the "worried well." The last thing he wanted was to join the frantic throng, to demand an immediate examination only to be told that he's merely suffering from fool-like symptoms. Actually, that wasn't the last thing he wanted. The last thing he wanted was to ignore whatever was wrong with him until it was too late to do anything about it. But was anything really wrong with him? He's feeling queasy -- but he's living in a queasy time. For now, he'll wait, and he'll watch. High alert. Posted 11/1/01. Rick
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Rick Horowitz
