The Intricate Tangle

I'm still reading 'War and Peace'. Last week I read that on 2 Sep 1812, as Napoleon's army entered the semi deserted Moscow and spread out starwise and reached the area where Pierre Bezuhof was staying, events found Pierre in a dream like state.

He had left his home two days earlier, "solely to escape the intricate tangle of life's daily demands which held him fast, and which in his present condition he was incapable of unravelling."

That simple description struck me as so pertinent to my own feelings of the past several months and particularly recent days.

After my late night call from the doctor advising me to go to the nearest hospital straight away I have been back the doctor the next day, a rheumatologist the following Monday, a surgeon the next day, and Monash Medical centre last Thursday for bilateral artery biopsy, and I now await tomorrow's appointment with the surgeon to remove the stitches and follow up with rheumatologist next Monday to learn the result of the biopsy.

I feel fit and well but extremely frustrated that I have lost my productivity with all this interruption to my routine and the running around and the considerable expenses (excess and gaps) above my private health insurance cover.

Were it not possible to read my book a little more than usual and run the lovely 'September Song' of Leah Flanagan (whom I discovered recently on U-Tube)through my brain at the most unexpected and perhaps innapropriate of times, I think, like Pierre, I may have bordered insanity. Whereas he resolved to locate and assassinate Napoleon, I think I would have strangled a receptionist or two at the very least.

We do indeed exist in an intricate tangle and are as vulnerable as bad luck would have it.