1 result for (book:deavf1 AND heading:"essay 1 thursday april 1 1982" AND stemmed:local)
[... 25 paragraphs ...]
In our other books I’d mentioned my physical symptoms now and then. By the time Seth finished dictating Dreams last month (on February 8), however, my physical condition had deteriorated. Two weeks later I could hardly get out of my chair onto the couch or the bed. After answering approximately 50 letters one weekend, the next weekend I could barely hold a pen to write my name. Soon afterward my hearing began to fade, then suddenly became blocked. A few days later I wound up in the emergency room of one of our local hospitals—and there, all too quickly I became familiar with the medical profession’s battery of testing paraphernalia. (Long pause.) I was placed in a CAT scanner, my bare backside pressed painfully against a cold metal table, my head encircled by the strange doughnut, or globe, while bright white lights and numbers, it seemed, flashed everywhere. They only X-rayed my head.
[... 11 paragraphs ...]
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 ...]