Perspective

 I guess I shouldn't complain about my various aches and pains. I mean, my shoulders and my neck always hurt, sometimes more and sometimes less, and the pain sometimes extends to my right back and flank, and I very often have a splitting headache, and my right hand seems partially paralyzed, such that the fingers move only slowly and cannot be straightened out and cannot reliably grasp or hold things, and my right leg doesn't work properly, often causing me to stumble,  and my stomach can still tolerate only simple foods, and yesterday I simply could not keep my eyes open and ended up sleeping most of the day ... and so on ... but at the same time, I have a friend in Jakarta, only 43 years old, who will be checking into the hospital next week for removal of her entire reproductive system due to cancer, and, as she tells me today, her brother, only 50 years old, just had a stroke and also ended up in the hospital. Happily, my problems, thus far, are bearable and can be dealt with at home. So, apparently, at 67 I'm doing great! Of course, I know people who are as old or older than I and are doing much better, but then again they are lousy people and I wouldn't want to make that trade off. So I'm not complaining (much). In fact, during the time that Louis has been here, sort of looking after me, I've said nothing  at all about these problems. I mean, there's nothing to be done anyway, so why mention them?