Please Excuse the Bloviator from Class This Week...

I apologize to to my semi-numerous readers for the recent absence. Some days ago your Bloviator, after much procrastination, at last underwent a complete physical exam. My doctor (new to me) was exceedingly competent thus annoyingly thorough (similar, in a way, to those priests in the box who feel compelled to grill you on absolutely everything). I checked out reasonably okay but left the examining room with four puncture wounds resulting from the various shots given me, including a booster shot for tetanus.

My doctor warned me I would probably have a reaction to that last one, including some "soreness." The man has a gift for understatement: the next morning I woke up feeling sicker than I have ever felt in my life. I've had the flue a couple of times and bad as that was, this was far, far worse; the flue on steroids. The worst part was not the muscle aches, nor the fever and the paradoxical chills, rather the seeming shutdown of my mind, including whatever intellectual capacity I might possess. If zombies can feel, I felt like zombie.

Early Thursday morning, however, I woke up in a sweat, indicating the fever had broken, and I indeed began to feel better. I went to work and at noon nipped over to St. Patrick's for mass, so to give thanks for deliverance from the horribleness. There I learned, to my surprise and pleasure, it was the day of Our Lady of Lourdes. It occurred to me she brought through me this wretched thing without my even asking so I thanked her there and I thank her here.



Thanks to Crossed the Tiber for the image.