Thanksgiving

As some of you know, I'm relatively unburdened by the religious memes that oblige me to be either (A) thankful for the blessings God has given me, or (B) guilty as hell if I'm not feeling particularly (A). Relatively unburdened. Which is to say, I'm a God-fearing heathen. Which is to say, I don't think I've figured this one out, and I doubt I ever will. The point is, my son Jacob is still sick, despite our attempts to turn his stomach into a medicine cabinet. His headaches are getting worse, as is his nausea, and his neurologist wants to send him to a neurologist. How f-d up is that? Today, Jake passed his eye exam with flying colors. (Perhaps that is proof of God's existence. Jake's mother and I would lose to Mr. Magoo in a game of darts.) That was my last hope that this would turn out to be something innocent. And yet . . . and yet my sublimely pessimistic medical imagination has run dry on what this COULD be. The CT and MRI effectively ruled out brain tumor or meningitis. The normal CBC (blood count) and sed rate ruled out leukemia. And now I'm racking my brains for all the hideous things I learned about in med school and subsequently forgot. He sees the neurologist's neurologist this Friday. I'll keep you posted. Meanwhile, I keep thinking about how religious folks deal with these stressful things. With faith, right? Faith that things will turn out all right. Faith that God has a plan. Faith that, even when things turn out for the worst, God still has a plan, and that we're too dense to know His mind. Ever hear the saying, "God never gives you more to deal with than you can handle"? Bullshit. Karen and I are handling this just fine, thank you very much, but I know there are things under the sun which would exceed our capacity. I know it. I've seen it happen to other people. It's my business. What a downer I am tonight. Maybe I should hop over to iTunes and see if I can find Felix Unger's, "Happy and Peppy and Bursting with Love." D.