Arrrrrgh!

One thing I don't get: Why doesn't the pain of an ailment match its seriousness? I have a trivial little flu, and I feel as if my skull were giving breech-birth to my eyeballs, every molar were abscessed and my ears were having angioplasty with weather balloons. On a scale of 1 to 10, I'd put my pain at about 8. By contrast, the malignant breast tumor that could have killed me generated zero pain.

In a day or two, this flu will abate and I'll be able to see it as one more uplifting proof of the body's ability to heal itself. Right now ... I'm not there yet.