Pain

I've always thought I'd want to live to be 100. But with my breast-cancer history—and the toxic treatments that paradoxically saved my life but will probably shorten it too—I doubt that I'll enjoy that kind of longevity. In any case, I can see how the aches and discomforts of ordinary aging might kill the desire to see each new day.

It's alarming how quickly pain erodes the will to live. One two-day bout with flu and sinus headache, and I was ready to throw in the towel. I feel a bit better today but chagrined by my weak spirit. This time I actually took the comfort meds—Dristan, Day-Quil, Sudafed—though they didn't do much good, and I felt plenty sorry for myself, all alone in my room, quarantined from my family, knowing I was a disgusting sight as I honked and snorted and sopped up the snot, my nose red from chafing, my eyes rheumy, my hair plastered unattractively to my scalp in clumps.

Would I really want to live to be 100 feeling like that?

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.