I pretty much figured I'd had a small stroke.

Oh, the drama.

It started Friday when I got home from the gym. The spousal unit said one of my eyes looked weird. I put it down to an allergic reaction to the gym towel I'd used because it had simply reeked of bleach. The eye continued to look odd Saturday but I didn't feel bad so I again figured it was an allergic reaction, that things would settle down.

Sunday I went in to Montreal to visit the daughter and that's when things started to get weird. The eye started to tear up. A lot. The right side of my face started to get that numbness you get when you're about half an hour from coming out of dental freezing. My right eye wouldn't close all the way. Chewing got odd. If I tried to speak quickly, my words got mangled.

Oh crap.

Monday it got more pronounced and by the time I got on the bus to go home that evening I was flat out scared. The spousal unit did lots of "there theres" and "it will be all rights" at home that night but I didn't sleep well because man oh man, we've lost friends to strokes.

One of the joys in living in a small place is that medical care here is very personal. Three doctors run a clinic in the village where I shop and one of them has been my doctor over 20 years now. I phoned up with my symptoms and he told me to come right in, he'd squeeze me in between his earliest appointments.

It didn't take him long to tell me I have Bell's Palsy and with time it will get better. My case is extremely mild--the right side of my face isn't completely frozen, but I can only manage a partial smile. I have goo for my eye and until it closes all the way I have to tape it shut at night before I sleep to make sure it doesn't dry out.

Mmmmmmmm, what could be sexier than sleeping with a woman with a goo-filled, taped shut eye? Admit it. You're insanely jealous of the spousal unit.

Completely understandable.

You know, perspective is an interesting thing. Last week if you'd said to me, "Marn, the right side of your face is going to be partially frozen for a while and you're going to have to put goo in your eye three times a day" I would have been horrified. There would have been mass quantities of anguish and drama.

But now I'm all, "Woo HOOOOOO, It's Not A Stroke" and everything else seems like small potatos.

Of course I did what any thinking woman would do, and immediately celebrated by going to the gym, since the doctor said that was fine.

Stop looking at me like that.

Trust me, if you'd spent a large hunk of a night deciding how'd you deal with something that could severely box in your world, one of the coolest possible ways to celebrate that you don't have to deal with that something is to run three miles and then spend an hour throwing around heavy bits of metal.

Because you can.

And because you can hear the clock softly ticking, ticking, ticking and you know that the verb "can't" is going to have to become a bigger part of your vocabulary.

Some day.

But not now.

--Marn

Mileage on the Marnometer: 249.73 miles.
Oh man. This is going to be hard
Goal for 2004: 1,000 miles - 1609 kilometers