It's that old adage of only appreciating something when it's gone.
I was diagnosed with a bee sting allergy many years back, but with a bit of awareness of my surroundings and careful avoidance, I have never had a problem.
It was only when I was tackling my Passionfruit Vine which has ambitions for total garden domination, that I discovered a new allergy. Wasps! Oh yes, I am now more scared of wasps than Redback spiders, and that's saying something.
Said Passionfruit Vine had totally covered my Lemonade Tree (yes you read that correctly, it's a Lemonade Tree and very yummy and sweet), and the vine was training down along the ground. It had to go, otherwise my crop of currently green fruit would die from lack of sunlight.
With trust secateurs in hand, I chopped and hacked in a manner befitting Sleeping Beauty's Prince Charming. As my labours neared their conclusion and the Lemonade Tree began to stretch its boughs in recovery, a dastardly nest of wasps swarmed towards me and my poor hand caught the full impact of their wrath.
Now this is not actually a photo of my hand, mine did in fact, look much worse than this. Two fingers and extending down onto the back of the hand were bright red, swollen like red sausages and as tight as a drum skin. I couldn't bend my finger at all and two fingers were going numb. The medical term for this reaction is Cellulitis - a infection of the skin cells. |
The harsh reality for me as a writer was that I couldn't hold a pencil or even do my usual 2-finger typing on the laptop. Help! I was in seriously dire straits.
Luckily, a couple of days later, it is less painful and the swelling is going down. I'm very tired due to the steroids keeping me awake all night, where I could imagine great plot twists, but not write a syllable. I'm still nauseous from the medical cocktail, but luckily have managed to keep down some chocolate, so all is well in the world.
Thank God for modern medicine and not the leeches of yesteryear.
Clickety clack goes the keyboard.
Happy writing folks, cheers, Kasper :-)