My friend Luigi asks, “Do you think prehistoric people were happier than we are?” We’re standing in line at an airport food vendor called the Dogpatch Bakehouse. Our flight is on time, but my stress level is high. I took a few wrong turns driving from the hotel to the airport, then left my phone…More
Tag Archives: health
Wreckage–from The Enjoy Agenda
I was ten years old the first time I saw a real car accident and its aftermath. It was a humid summer evening. My father and I were closing our service station when the township siren sounded. A cop car screamed through town. Then the phone rang. My father took the call, listened a few…More
Help?–the smile test and the agony next door
“I’d like you to take a drink of water,” the nurse says. “From a straw.” I’m in the ER at West Bloomfield Henry Ford Health System. She hands me a styrofoam cup with a lid on it, a straw poking out. I’m good at this. I take a little sip, nod and smile. “Not a…More
Give Us This Day Our Daily Dirt
The doctor writes down what I might have: an occult bacterial infection. I’ve presented with vague symptoms–not fever, not chills, not headache; not blurred vision or runny nose or scratchy throat or ear ache or rash or suddenly flat feet. Just a kind of malaise that, if I’m unlucky, might transition to one of the…More
Taste Your Feet–all well and natural in Italy
I’ve got wellness on my mind. “Canducci Tiziana.” That’s how they call my wife when it’s her turn. Last name first. We’re at the Repubblica di San Marino Instituto di Sicurezza Sociale (aka the hospital), where she’s here to see an orthopedic doc. A few weeks ago at the Bargello museum in Florence, while I…More