What a difference a year makes

 A year ago Jim and I joined our children and grandchildren in Roatan, a Caribbean island belonging to Honduras. Then we flew to the mainland to visit Xiomara’s home town and her relatives.

I got the usual traveller’s complaint and made it through two more family reunions (in the excitement of the lessening of the pandemic, three branches of our family planned travel reunions.).

I didn’t recover with my usual speed. Actually, I don’t usually get sick, so I didn’t realize that 104 degree temperature is dangerously high. I went on our annual Church campout because I didn’t want to disappoint our four grandkids: we’d planned for it all year.

At the campground, I fell three times on the gently rolling lawn. In a state of total denial, I blamed my old sneakers, with worn-slick soles. Turned out it was a kidney infection.

Anticipating the campout this year, with our two grandkids from the Bronx, I felt an inexplicable dread. I finally realized the anxiety was caused by a fear of a repetition of last year.

But I hadn’t been to Honduras this year and I didn’t fall once at the campground. Instead of sitting, exhausted, in my camp chair by the pond, I swam some laps and paddled with my granddaughter. We're all looking forward to next year.

Denial

 Looking back over my behavior, how could I fail to see that I was sick, very sick?

I’d spent two weeks feeling exhausted with intermittent high fevers and night sweats. But each day I thought I was getting better, until the fever would hit again or I’d find myself unable to forgo a nap.

Two of our grandkids spent the week with us and I played the electronic babysitter card: turn on a movie and sleep on the couch.

Then we went on our annual ward campout at Camp Joseph, the Church-owned campground at the Joseph Smith birthplace in Sharon, Vermont. I had planned it to be as low-stress as possible. My son Sam had agreed to handle all the food. We rented cabins so we didn’t have to set up tents and sleep on the ground. But it wasn’t enough.

Camp Joseph is a lovely, well-groomed campground. It has rolling lawns and copses of trees. Very easy camping. But just walking less than a city block to the bathhouse wore me out. And I fell three times. Jim was standing next to me during one. I told him that it was my gardening sneakers. Not wanting to take my new sneakers camping, I had donned my gardening sneakers. After the second fall I looked at the soles: they were slippery smooth with no tread. (I tossed them as soon as I had a chance.)

Besides the falls and exhaustion (I carried a collapsible camp chair and sat down any time I wasn’t moving from place to place.) I had mental confusion. I couldn’t remember the date: I was confident it lay somewhere between August 14 and 30 but could get no closer. I’d been planning this campout with all four grandkids, Jim, and Sam and Savannah for months. But the date was not accessible in my brain.

All of that and I blamed the falls on my no-tread sneakers.

How often do we see ourselves clearly? Do we blame our circumstances on no-tread sneakers?

After the campout, my doctor discovered a kidney infection and with a simple course of antibiotics (Thank you, Alexander Fleming!) I recovered. In August I slept ten hours out of every twenty four. Now I’m back to eight and have two more hours in my day.

Is this a harbinger of old age? I know a woman, older than me, who had to use a walker. Then she embarked in some serious physical therapy. Now she is walker-free. We all run down eventually, if we’re blessed to live long enough. This time I recovered.