Back to reality

So, I'm back at work these days.  Even rode my bike to get here this morning (and there's a hill on St. Paul St. that's a real pisser for a guy with recovering lung, but i made it).  Oddly, for a guy who missed so much work, I have precious little to do here, but that's mostly due to construction around the building, not me being incapable of doing any work.  People here have told me that I'm looking better (one co-worker said that I looked "gray" back in March before everything hit the fan.  Yikes.)  I did push-ups today.  Not a lot of them, but enough to make me feel good.  Plus, the steroid side effects are slowly going away (acne in weird places, sleeplessness, getting ridiculously bloated).  I am now attempting to work off the gut I developed sitting around and eating for the last few months.  This is something I have never done in my life, so we'll see how that goes.  I suppose a couple weeks off the pizza and hot dogs is probably in order.  Crap.

Anywho, that's the physical stuff.  Nothing short of miraculous, eh?  Okay, I'm not bitter.  But when people say how crazy it was that all this stuff happened to me, I can only reply, "Yeah, it sucked."  No other way to describe it, really.  But I'm back.  I can take normal showers again.  I am riding my bike (thanks to my awesome friend Hides, who donated hers to the cause).  I have had a few beers.  I'm worried about my hair and money.  If I go on a bad date here and there, everything will pretty much be exactly as it was before all this.  Well, okay, I'll try to avoid the bad dates.

I guess I have a slightly different outlook on things, probably besides washing my hands more often.  It's inevitable.  Weeks spent virtually alone with nothing to do but think and watch fluids come out of your lung will do that to a guy.  In the end, I'm not sure I want a whole new outlook on life, though.  Maybe it's there, but I'm certainly not going to get all preachy about it like some character from Rent.  It happened, and like I tell people, it sucked, but other than "Go to the doctor if you're sick," I don't have a lot of sage wisdom to offer.    Oh, and if you do have to be hospitalized, and they offer pain medication, take it!  Don't be uncomfortable, for Christ's sake.  Those are the two most important things I can take away from this.

I wish I could say I came away from this having found Nirvana or something, but let's face it, I'm pretty much just glad I came out of it at all.  I do have a slightly better understanding of what's important (basically, health), so I probably will have a few less things to complain about for awhile.  But soon enough, I'm sure I'll go back to complaining about everything.  I'm sure I'll be the same son-of-a-bitch I always was.  Hopefully, that's good enough for everybody.