My, how the mighty have fallen...

I've been wrestling with the idea of picking back up on regular blogging. At the moment, I'm thinking I'll just write this and let things go as they may. I blogged in high school, and that blog still resides somewhere in the depths of the internets. So anyway, I've been thinking lately about how people long to time travel back to the sweet sweet days of childhood. I assume the common purpose for such a longing is to be free of obligations, stress, what-have-you -- basically some obscure idea of freedom. I can understand this longing, but my longing for the past is a bit different and only serves to make me feel even older. What I want is to be effortlessly healthy again. I remember skipping into doctors' offices, playing with toys while mother happily checked the "No" option next to all of the "Do you have tuberculosis?"-like questions. I'd go through a check-up and everything would be just fine. I was free to go back home and run around outside. Those were some good days, but my-oh-my how the mighty have fallen. Exactly a year ago, I was training to be a wilderness counselor at an adventure camp. I got to do all but swing through trees. It was amazing. Each day of training was a new adventure: jumping off a platform 30 feet off the ground, caving, white water rafting, team-building activities, etc. Of course it couldn't continue to be so perfect, so at the staff party night, I was playing basketball with a bunch of guys and one of the guys jacked up my right knee. I'd never had any sort of knee problem in the past, so I didn't think much of it. I iced it and hobbled around until bedtime. Waking up the next morning, I moved my legs to step out of bed only to feel a seering pain in my right knee. I couldn't bend it. At all. And it was really really swollen. And so to keep this story short and not too tragic, I'll just say this knee injury put some constraints on my experience as a wilderness counselor but I stuck it out and still had an amazing summer. After plenty of physical therapy, I figured I was getting close to being as good as new. However, winter break brought it's own bit of debilitating sorrow. I started having back problems caused by the knee injury and had to get some more physical therapy, which helped and I started feeling better. And then spring break came with another foul blow to my once spry form. My left knee somehow (I really do not know how) gave out the same way the right knee had given out before while I was playing basketball on a mission trip. Fantastic. Really. I decided to do my own self-prescribed physical therapy for this one and have been doing alright thus far. So that would be the end of my body-breaking woes, but just a few nights ago after watching two wonderful hours of Bones on TNT I got some pains in the right and left sides of my abdomen. Slowly the pain concentrated more on my lower right side and got much stronger within the hour -- so strong I started to writhe on the floor, crying uncontrollably. This was when mother decided to call the doctor and 20 minutes later, I was throwing up and still writhing in pain in the ER waiting room. Ridiculous, I know, but that is what happened. It took forever for any painkillers to get into my system, but after some tests and scans and what-not, I was out of there with four prescriptions to fill. It was 3:00 am. They told me my kidney was infected but my regular doctor thinks my kidney is not infected, but instead I have a kidney stone I've yet to pass. I'm seeing her tomorrow. And then I'll be seeing a urologist soon. And then an orthopedist. So where are my sweet youthful days? I'd say they're a year in my past at this point. June 6th was the anniversary of my right knee injury. I'm not so much bitter as I am humbled as to how fragile my existence in this world really is. It's pretty obvious that our bodies fail us at some point, so I'm looking forward to my new 100% knee-injury-proof, infection-proof, back-pain-proof body to come.