Sunday, August 5, started out unremarkable. Lynn was out of town with her friend Kim at Kim's grandmother's, but I went to church anyway. As far as my appearance goes, I'd begun to feel stuck in a rut where every day I wore the same black pull-on skirt and whatever color cotton shirt was handy, sandals, no makeup, my hair clean and combed but certainly not styled. That morning I wore a linen dress, hose, and real shoes, arranged my hair, and did my face.

After church I reviewed the feedback that my fiction tutor sent me. Our first meeting on Wednesday had been productive and encouraging, and I was feeling confident that this was someone who could help me develop in a new direction. I made lesson plans based on his suggestions -- cut one third of the story I completed last March, do some exercises on how to manipulate time in a narrative, and prepare something new (to him, anyway) for his evaluation.

It was one of those days when I was really focused on my "get back to where you once belonged" diet and exercise plan. I wrote down everything I ate -- lots of plain water, fresh vegetables, a measured low-fat chicken fettucine entree from Weight Watchers, and a 30-minute walk despite the heat. After supper I did some writing and then settled down to watch a movie (Heat, with Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino).

I became aware of a pain, like a fist pressed into my ribs, high under the right breastbone. I thought it was gas. Changing position didn't help. It didn't get worse, but neither did it go away. After the movie I did some reading, and found that I couldn't find a comfortable position lying down. I think I dozed sitting up on the sofa in my study, but I didn't really sleep.

At 6:00 I made coffee. At 9:00 the pain was still there, hovering like the blanket of humidity that was beginning to make the whole landscape tremble with its pressure. I called my primary care physician.

The nurse practitioner saw me at 10:00. She asked a few questions, palpated the appropriate areas, and wrote orders for an ultrasound and a complete blood count. "You're having a gall bladder attack, I'm certain," she said. "You'll likely have surgery." All I could think of was the way my friend who evaluates disability claims classifies such cases: "3F -- fat, female, and fifty." Because of the cream in my coffee, the tests had to wait until 2:30.

I went about my business, although my concentration was beginning to falter as I began contemplating the possibility of surgery. I made a list of things I'd planned to do in the next few days that could not wait and would have to be done by someone else. At 2:00 I packed a bag of essentials and drove myself over to the hospital. (I am a veteran of excursions like this. There is a lot of waiting and things progress very slowly, and I have a tendency to feel obligated to entertain whoever has been enlisted to transport and wait with me.Unless my problem is a broken leg, I'm my own escort and support system.)

By 5:00 the tests had been completed. Surgery was indicated, but since no infection seemed present there was no need to proceed immediately, so I was sent home.

I ate one wedge of a nectarine and realized I had no appetite. The pain had seemed to increase (a perception I thought more psychological than real). At 6:30 my nurse called. I most certainly did have a dangerous infection and I was to get myself over to the hospital at once. The sliver of nectarine was complicating things, but they were going in as soon as they could.

By 9:30 I had been admitted. I had intra-venous drips installed delivering hydration and nutrition. At 10:00 someone checked my vitals. An antibiotic was introduced into the IV mix.

Suddenly every pore in my body seemed to swell, turn bright red, and I saw white welts popping out all over my skin. I screamed as a searing pain shot through me. "She's seizing!" I heard someone yell. There followed then the scenario you read about -- my mind watching the scene from the ceiling, ethereal light, angels beckoning, the works.

"Are you allergic to any medications?" they ask you. "No," I always answer, forgetting to add "so far," since adverse reactions, no matter the severity, are usually discovered the hard way.

There is a gap in my awareness here. The next thing I'm sure of someone was slapping the back of my hand to raise a vein for a new IV. (I have thin veins which are sometimes hard for even experienced "blood suckers" to access. Call them "bad veins" at your peril. See my rant about this subject posted on January 5.) Jay Leno was on the television and my roommate, a woman so sick she has an IV port permanently stitched into her body, was crying. Her mother died last year, and Jay Leno was her favorite performer.

By then I was willing to call what I was feeling "pain" rather than "discomfort." I accepted the sleep help of whatever narcotic had been prescribed, which didn't so much as put me out as put me above and beyond into a world where myriad thoughts floated in my head and I'd think an hour had passed when it had only been fifteen minutes.

I had the surgery in the late morning, a "laparoscopic cholescystectomy," or "lap choly" in medical shorthand. That means four little puncture wounds closed with bandaids, not stitches. I went home the day after surgery and expected to pick up with my writing plans right where I left off. Instead I would sit stupidly at my writing table feeling a despair worse than any I'd known before. I'd pick up a pen and open my notebook and have no inkling about where or how to begin. I'd sleep without rest and wake to begin again, with the same disappointing results.

The surgical technique used is described as "minimally invasive," but that term is misleading, or so I was told last week by the surgeon who assured me it was okay to still be feeling disabled and disoriented from my real life. Although I've been spared a huge incision through layers of muscle, my insides have been pushed around, propped out the way, and probed for signs of damage. Recovery time is cut by two-thirds (from six weeks to two), not eliminated altogether.

Today is the two-week mark. I've slowly returned to what I think of as "normal" and this morning actually addressed, with productive results, the work plan I developed a few hours before the pain hit. I've lived through an August, interrupted, and I'm ready to move on.