The best laid plans…end up on the couch

I was going to write a bit more about the early months of figuring out my disease today, but then walked home from work today. This involves walking the last ½ mile uphill (and it gets steeper the further you go). So when I walked in the door I was sweating profusely. I took off my sweatshirt and t-shirt, got out a towel and went to the living room to sit for a moment and cool off. Not to mention bring my respiration and pulse rates back down into only double digits again.

The way you cool down at this time of the year is to turn on the television and watch the Olympics. Just moments before I got home, the puck was dropped in the Canada-Russia quarterfinal hockey match and thus, it was being televised when I turned on the set and clicked to the deep end of the cable spectrum.

I was born and raised in Minnesota. I was never a particularly good skater, but that did not stop me from playing hockey every winter from the time I was about 9 years old. We used to flood the backyard and freeze it into a rink. We had an old streetlight on a pole and played hockey until they forced us inside to bed. When we got older, we played at the local parks and on the ponds cleared off the frozen lakes in town. We played on skates and we played something called “boot hockey” with a frozen ball and tennis shoes when we didn’t feel like dealing with all the equipment. We didn’t ski because there were no mountains and skiing was something only the rich kids could afford. Cross-country skiing was the province of the old Norwegian guys that we all thought were crazy. But everyone could play some sort of hockey.

This all is just a pale attempt to explain why I had to watch two of the best teams in the world go at it in the Olympics. And, once the Canadians had thoroughly thrashed the Russians (the first period was one of the most exciting, balls to the wall periods of hockey I can remember seeing in eons), why I am watching the Czechs play in the second game now. Well not exactly now as I am writing this between periods, but you get the point.

The Hep C will be around for a while but the Olympics come once every 4 years. So I will tell you about meeting my gastroenterologist another time and head back down to my comfortable sofa, a tall glass of water and some truly wonderful hockey.