Lease?

What has happened to me over the last month is so cliché that I'm embarrassed to even write about it because I can't do it without sounding like a bad novelist. But I have to do it. I'll take the chance.

I have a new lease on life.

That does not mean that from this day on that I'm going to look at the world through rose-colored glasses. There isn't going to be some magical transformation into Pollyanna or something. I'm still me. Just different.

I almost died. That is not a statement I made of my own volition. I was told by a fully-qualified medical doctor that the person who brought me to the Emergency Room saved my life. I was officially stupid on Friday night, February 12th. On that night, I became one of those people who insisted I knew better, that I was in control of my senses. I was an idiot.

Thank God, she was not an idiot. The doctor told me that, with what I had wrong with me, I was lucky she won out, and I was lucky to be alive.

That's pretty strong language, right?

I don't much like the thought of being dead. I know I will be someday, but now would not be a good time. I have people who depend on me, who love me, who like me with air in my lungs and who are glad that I am on this side of the dirt.

I'm trying to be a little silly with this because otherwise it makes me want to cry. A doctor wouldn't say that if it weren't true. There was no audience. Only he and I were there.

I'm having those moments of cognition. I see my kids with clearer vision. And yeah, the food I'm able to eat tastes a little better. And the dog even gets a little more attention. The world isn't nearly as annoying lately.

I spent 8 days in a hospital bed, in a very good hospital. And anyone who is familiar with the way HMO's and insurance companies run the medical field these days knows that 8 days means I must have been really, really sick.

I was.

And I haven't smoked a single cigarette (though that wasn't the root of the problem) since that Friday. Almost a month.

So, I like things a little better these days. And I don't smell as badly as I must have when I was a human chimney.

I do still like boots though, so as I said, I'm still me.

I feel as though I was an episode of "House, MD". Not completely uncool.

And I feel as though my Blogging Muse has repossessed me.

Thanks for the time you spent reading this. I hope you'll be as glad I'm not a corpse as I am at the moment.