This has been an amazing year. I started the year with the following journal entry:

I found myself to be in an unusually good mood, as I jogged along, feeling a definite joie-de-vivre which had been otherwise so much lacking of late. I started to think about what it would be like to wake up feeling so good every day - that would be a powerful way to live. I started to make mental notes for a journal entry later that day, and even a new idea for a short movie, about how others experience joie-de-vivre.

In the same entry I described how I had a fairly serious accident at the gym later that day and had to spend the next week on my back. Now, a year later, two things strike me about that journal entry. First, I had no idea that that incident at the gym would only be the beginning of the most expensive year in my life ever, medically speaking. And second, over the last few months, I have indeed known what it's like to wake up feeling good every day.

A recounting of one's medical history can never be very interesting, except, of course, to the person telling their history. But here goes, in a nutshell. First the back injury: several months of chiropractic treatment, up to three times a week. Then, in the spring, I was finally diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome, and began to see a specialist: the result was several expensive office visits along with hormonal and dietary treatments. All year long, I had a lot of pain in my wrists from overuse on the computer, and I'm continuing to see a physical therapist twice a week, not to mention needing new ergonomic equipment both at home and at work. Next up, pain in my heels which turned out to be plantar fasciitis due to flat feet, requiring, once again, physical therapy as well as custom orthotic insoles. Anything else? Oh yes, sleep apnea. Not yet diagnosed, but I'm going to have to spend the night in the Sleep Center at Mount Zion, so that they can hopefully figure out why I wake up in the middle of the night not breathing.

Thank God that I have great medical coverage. The only thing they haven't paid for is the only thing I didn't mention in that sorry catalog: weekly talk therapy. I'm not quite sure why 2002 was the year my body decided to fall apart. But the odd thing is that now, at the end of the year, I feel like a million bucks. The power of medicine has defeated almost everything I threw at it, except for the wrist problem and the potential sleep apnea. The biggest change has been with the chronic fatigue, which I've experienced all my adult life, but which went undiagnosed until this year. I've now gone over six months without a serious episode, and I'm beginning to feel I'm on the way to full recovery. It's given me a new zest and self-confidence, not to mention more physical strength, endurance and ... well ... friskiness (not that I ever really lacked the latter).

The motto is ... get good health insurance? No, not really. It's that if you take your self seriously, and persist, you can make your life better. Now, if I can just learn to type without using my wrists, and stop waking up suffocating, everything will be dandy :)