I'm arriving at a new appreciation of the word "patient". Because that's what I am right now, in a Cambridge, Mass. hospital. My diagnosis is acute pancreatitis: an inflamation of the pancreas caused in this case by an endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography (aka ERCP). One out of twenty ERCPs result in pancreatitis. Mine scored.

I'm on morphine now, so I'm in less pain; and I'm able to write a little. My subject is the patient as a point of integration.