The OTHER Side of the Story

Remember this post? Well, the patient has decided to speak out against Unfair Treatment Of Sick Husbands (UTOSH) and stand up for the rights of couch-ridden men everywhere.

Seaweed: Beneficial Undersea Food Source Or Malificent Pelagic Killer?

This headline demonstrates that there are two perspectives to every story, a Yin an Yang, if you will, to every event. For example, a concentration camp Commandant might think that things are going quite smoothly for the inmates, and everything is running as purposed. For the inmate, however, that probably means regular beatings, sensory deprivation and a lousy menu, but what one side reports is going to be very different than what the other reports.

Take my illness for example. My wife was not the one lying incapacitated on the sofa in a delerious visceral agony. She was not the one experiencing sensations in her bowels that would overwhelm a Roman Gladiator. What she saw was simply a grown man reduced to moaning, whining and griping, in short suffering to the uttermost, which is to the dispassionate and cold-hearted, a rather annoying thing to witness.

It's like trying to sleep at 3 a.m. only to be kept awake by a caterwauling feline in heat. Yes, the female cat is suffering, as the physiological processes accompanied with heat can be very painful. But who cares? It's 3 a.m. and the thing is making a noise like, well, like a cat in a blender. It's the same thing with me and my albeit brief bout with the exotic viral gastrointestinal attack. I was in unfathomable agony, which manifested itself in very vocal and immobilizing ways, and my wife, desensitized from years of caring for children, saw only an adult behaving in a childlike manner, and beheld yet another body to take care of. It's sad, really, because I have now fully recovered from my sickness of body, but it may take a long time indeed for my wife to recover from her sickness of soul.