What Matters

For 4 weeks a “head thing” has been trying to get me sick. But I am smart, so I flushed out my sinuses many times a day and stuck Zicam up my nose. I was sure I would outsmart the rhino virus or whatever was after me. And then…then it went to my chest. This is a big deal for those of us who have autoimmune disease and take immunosuppressive drugs. We can die. I don’t freak out like I used to, at least not as much, but I do take it seriously. So, I called my rheumy, a good friend and a great and caring doc. I left a message at 2 PM. By 6:30 PM I had no answer so I called his cell. I take having my doc’s cell as a very special privilege and never abuse it. But I was gacking up yellow stuff which is a danger sign. I called. He answered. The “girl” had never given him the message and he called in the antibiotics. Never let the pit bull gate keeper prevent you from getting the medical help you need.

You (and I) have a right to get the help we need!
So today, I gacked and hacked and gurgled my way through 2 Masses and 2 rehearsals. Sure, I missed just a few notes biuit was pretty good considering that over the years I have learned to gack and hack while playing and avoid doing that during the sermon or readings. But wonderful things happened. There is this fantastic mature woman in the parish who does quiet, gentle and caring things. After she went to communion she dropped by the organ and handed me a much needed cough drop. Nice. Then Mass at 11 was a Youth Mass and time for the praise band aka Mustard Seeds. For the first time in a year and a half, they were an ensemble, a group, a community. They had this amazing intuitive sense of the music and each other. I was tired and sick and all I wanted to do was go home. But those of us with chronic illness have learned that we work, sick or not. We have learned that you may feel bad, but that staying home does not fix it, so you go on. And that is what I did. An hour into rehearsal I was thinking about how to end it. But the youth were so attentive that I continued. They did amazing things. They did hard things musically that I would never have dreamed they could do. They didn’t know these things were hard so they did them. I didn’t know that living with chronic illness was hard so I did it. You can too.

Christmas is coming. I already got the biggest presents. I got to see kids do more than they knew they could do. Kids who wanted to kill each other (hormonal girls and the subject of another post) put their differences aside and declared themselves BFF. Peace on earth and good will toward one another can happen. We simply need to open our eyes to what is important.