1 result for (book:deavf1 AND heading:"essay 1 thursday april 1 1982" AND stemmed:hand)
[... 12 paragraphs ...]
She hadn’t dozed quite as much in the hospital, for there she’d been roused by much more constant stimuli. And now, we just have to wait an unknown number of weeks or months for the thyroid treatment to rejuvenate her vitality. At the moment it seems that Jane uses her available energy for the main task at hand. If she’s just eaten, for example, her body focuses its resources upon digestion, with perhaps conscious lapses resulting. During other longer periods, say, those resources may direct themselves toward healing or dreaming—or possibly both.
[... 22 paragraphs ...]
(8:21.) In this book, Seth does discuss to some degree the nature of certain illnesses as they apply to individual life and genetic survival. And there I lay in the hospital for a full month, with physical survival uppermost in my mind—hardly a coincidence. They told me that my thyroid gland was very underactive, and that I had arthritis. They X-rayed my hands but not my knees. One of the blood tests showed that I was slightly anemic. But other tests and X-rays revealed that I had sound lungs—in spite of my smoking—a good heart and stomach and other organs. I laughed.
[... 1 paragraph ...]
I liked practically all of the doctors and nurses and orderlies, and they liked me. Most of them didn’t know or care “who I was.” Very few were familiar with my work (although a few local fans—strangers—eventually found their way to my hospital room). I found I could hold my own in that environment that at first had seemed so alien. I learned to joke even as my backside swung perilously above the commode, while I hoped that its aim was true in the hands of the nurses and orderlies—and again I felt that long-forgotten camaraderie with people, and a growth within myself apart from my work, or what I did. I had a right to be on earth because I’d been born here like every other physical creature, and on that level alone I was part of a great framework of physical energy and cooperation.
[... 5 paragraphs ...]