Un-, faux, illness

Grant that no clouds of this mortal life may hide from us the light of that love which is immortal...

Written this evening to a friend, but edited for here. May it serve as something of an explanation for where I have been of late. I have not been well. But all shall be well, all shall be well, all manner of things shall be made well.

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Dear friend,

I want to write you quickly, if only to allay my own rather touchy conscience. You have heard me coughing an awful lot, by now.

But, I write you to assure you that I am not in the least contagious. I am not sick at all—that is, sick with an infection, or infected by anything in particular. And so I cannot make anyone else sick.

So, it is a faux illness. But it is also very much un-faux. I am faring very poorly at present. Insofar as homeopathic medicine tends to remedy brokenness in the body by first exacerbating whatever it is that is symptomatically presenting—well, let the reader understand with regards to my present estate.

If I might, though, I might ask for your prayers. I am very much submerged in the crucible of autoimmune disease (as I have been for just, just shy of two years, now); for some time this year, I was containing, with horridly variable results, admittedly, the symptoms, but I was very sick always. Well, after some reading, and much more praying than reading—I mostly do things by instinct, if we’re honest—I started a cocktail of various herbs and substances. All new. I’d never gone this route before. Therein is the root of my cough: I have been coughing up blood and pus and whatever else from my lungs, where it has laid nestled in noxious rot for these latter years. Therein is the root of my stinging eyes, the searing inflammation in every muscle group. My muscles are wreathed in such fire that I cannot even bend over and clear my knees with the heels of my hands. With every cough, such wreaths of fire only blaze all the hotter, and with sharper clenching pressure. My smell and taste have wandered off. Vertigo is in full swing (pun intended). My sinuses, or Eustachian tubes, incessantly bleeding, which is also much of what elicits coughing. And my jaw is swelling, its range of motion gradually, unflinchingly, contracting. But I have suffered all of this before, and with much more death besides, and so, by God’s Grace, I smile mildly, and choke through the prayers et al., and swim in Romans 12 and Hebrews 12.

My aim was purgative: to strip latent poisons from the crevices into which the body deposits such unsavory things when it doesn’t know what else to do with them. But to strip them out of tissue, they must then drift into the blood: and so they are then given a whirlwind tour of the body on their way to the kidneys and beyond. And so the poison is everywhere; the pain, everywhere.

None of this is intended to arouse pity or sorrow per se. I only wish to be quite frank! It is hard—or, I find it hard—when people have said to me, “Paul, can you pray for me? I have this, err, medical problem.” And then they wander off, so untrusting, or so worshipful of their privacy(?), that they wish to farm out spiritual labor with no care for spiritual candor. Anyway: I don’t want to do that. So I don’t.

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At that first-aid training re-upping the other day, I chortled to myself as he described the symptoms of heart attacks. I know them well. I have bouts of tachycardia about biweekly, at this point. “If you ever feel even one of these symptoms coming on, you have to call 911 right away!” Heh. No, everything will be okay. I shall not let slip the mirror dimly from my heart flickering out. No, the stabbing cardiac pain; the BPM soaring just south of 200; no, no, no. Everything will be okay. This is not how it all—how I—will end.

But I would very much like for the tachycardia and all its compatriots to end. So, I am gobbling herbs and suffering the consequences. But perhaps, this is but one last fire, one final crucible; perhaps it is not unlike that last piercing Fire in Purgatorio, as the last violence against Good—lust—is immolated away.

Or, perhaps, nominative determinism shall claim the day, and this jagged, deathly thorn shall remain firmly lodged in my skull, bifurcating the right from the left in all manner of muscles, nerves, and senses.

But you are my friend, and I would treasure your prayers.

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I hope and pray you aren’t alarmed by anything. None of this is particularly novel, though. I am very sick, always, and have been for so long. That perhaps you did not always know the gory details does not alter what Reality was, or is. Worry not for me, please. Christ shall not leave unfinished those works which He began. You know some, not all, of my battles, my wars; but you know too of my song. There is yet more to sing.

Blessings always unto you; as ever—
Paul