On Being Well...

For the third day in a row I've woken up without feeling like a truck ran over me. I actually felt good enough this morning to work out for the first time in a week (mental note: yes, you can get out of shape in as little as as week's time!). For the first time in a week, I'm alert and hitting on all eight cylinders. It's a good feeling, and it's a shame it takes getting blindsided by illness to fully appreciate it.

My illness last week threw me for a loop, hard. I tend to get really sick really fast for a day or so; taking a day to rest and bouncing right back into the swing of things. The last time an illness put me out of commission for a week I think was in high school when I got the chicken pox for the second time (first time was a weak case in 1st grade). I was sick for about a week then, too; of course being a teenager I bounced back much faster.

You realize just how much we take living in the modern age for granted - I had an upper respiratory infection that was treated quickly with modern antibiotics. A hundred years ago that might have gone untreated; left to its own devices to either work its way out of my system or take over and bring me down. Instead, a quick doctor's visit and a few moments at the pharmacy and I'm well on my way to recovery. What an amazing age indeed.

It's only when that health is stripped away that you realize how fortunate we are to live in this time of medical advances; when you think about how far health care has come in the past 100 years. It makes you wonder, though; what advances will we continue to make in the next 100 years? Will we finally see things like regenerating organs or limbs? Cancer vaccines? Simple methods for treating heart disease?

Or will we pass our "universal health care" debacle and bring the US Health Care system to a grinding halt?

That is all.