Quality of life

This is my second day at home with a cold. It has been a drag, except for the extra hour of sleep each morning. Yesterday my throat felt like I had swallowed boiling oil, or a bunch of needles and they got stuck there. I drank enough hot tea to sink a ship but it made no difference. There was no improvement by bedtime.

Somehow I managed to sleep quite solidly in spite of my discomfort. My waking dream was about food. I was pigging out on a cartload of sweets that others were tempting me to try. I was feeling a bit guilty and making excuses for the indulgence, knowing that as a diabetic I shouldn’t be eating any of it. My friend Leanne says I’m becoming more like a woman as I age. I think she’s right, not that that is a bad thing. Not only am I more interested in security than passion, but now chocolate is looking better than sex.

I woke up at 8, an hour later than usual, having slept the whole night through without interruption. My throat felt worse than when I went to bed so I called in sick again. There’s no way I could spend the whole day on the phone non-stop, explaining policy and legislation to the terminally bewildered. Since getting up, the pain in my throat has subsided to a mild discomfort, though I have been sneezing occasionally. Besides these symptoms, I feel quite well except for a gentle tiredness.

But being at home is no fun. There really doesn’t seem to be anywhere to go except when I want to eat, drink or shop. I had breakfast at Joe’s Diner late morning, which I ate luxuriously slowly. It’s a cool, bright morning, perfect for my mid-week weekend, but with a cool breeze. After breakfast I sauntered up to Shoppers’ Drug Mart and West Valley Produce to do some shopping. My legs are a bit weaker than usual, which I blame on the virus.

Now I am home again with no real reason to go out. My place is so much darker than the sunshine outside, but I don’t think it’s wise to sit in the cool wind. Yesterday I tried writing on my novel but my words came out dry, dry, dry. I just couldn’t get into it. My 100-day writing drive have faltered for the past two weeks.

Being alone without much to do gets me wondering what life will be like in a few years when I retire, when my theme song becomes “Too Much Time On My Hands”. I was always active and engaged in my 30s and 40s and more athletic than most of my friends. I never foresaw myself coming to this dilemma so soon. I have lost the ability to do many of the things I have enjoyed in the past, and have often pondered my fate without coming to any clearer understanding of what lies in store for me.

I have also been thinking about a university study that was done on aging and quality of life. The study claimed to measure quality of life, though probably it only measured physical abilities of the seniors involved. Only the arrogance of youth can claim that quality of life means being able to do what they can do. Many able-bodied youths have terrible lives. Who is to say that needing others to do your grocery shopping, cooking and cleaning for you isn’t an improvement in your quality of life? I am sure quality of life has much more to do with one’s ability to adapt to changing realities—physical, emotional, economic—and to find joy in the activities within one’s reach. It’s about the drive to experience life and to dance with it, even if the only thing one can do is listen, and not to resign oneself to futility and helplessness. That is the challenge.