Drama in Real Life

For the past week or so, I have been suffering from extremely achy joints-- particularly my lower back and knees. While most people would attribute this to the mild flu I caught last week, and to the fact that we keep our house at 60 degrees to avoid a repeat of the Dreaded $255 Gas Bill, I fear that there is a more sinister plot in action.

When I was little, I read an installment of "Drama in Real Life" in my parents' copy of Reader's Digest that described a woman that woke up with some aches and pains-- like me!-- that got progressively worse over the course of several days-- like me!-- and then her body shut down completely, the only warning being her achy joints, and she remained in a locked-in state for over three years, forced to communicate only by blinking her eye-- her one non-locked-up eye-- a certain number of times to indicate a letter on a chart. Eventually she recovered, but she was never quite the same. I believe she wrote a book about the experience. But I didn't read the book. I only read "Drama in Real Life," and internalized the fact that if my joints ache, there is a very good chance that I will be confined to a hospital bed, being wiped off with sponges by indifferent nurses every few days and blinking furiously to spell out things like "If only I had gone to the doctor to treat my achy joints before it was too late!"

And that is why parents of nervous children should not subscribe to Reader's Digest.