Diarrhea (Cha cha cha)

I wanted to start this newest blog entry with a little ditty from my childhood. By the way, I have absolutely no idea what the heck a ditty actually is. All I know is before he dropped the Cougar, John Mellencamp sang a song about one. Due to the obscurity of the phrase I thought it perfect given the nature of this blog so I just ran with it.

When you're climbing up a ladder,
and you feel something splatter...

Diarrhea (Cha cha cha)
Diarrhea (Cha cha cha)

When you’re chilling' with your daughter,
and you feel the poopoo water...

Diarrhea (Cha cha cha)
Diarrhea (Cha cha cha)

When you're miles from anywhere,
and your bowels just don't care...

Diarrhea (Cha cha cha)
Diarrhea (Cha cha cha)

When you're riding in a Chevy
and you feel something heavy.

Diarrhea (Cha cha cha)
Diarrhea (Cha cha cha)

Given the title of this blog I am hoping you have guessed that there is something extra special wrong with me today. I have fallen victim to a stomach virus which according to my nurse practitioner has been running rampant throughout all Mercer, Middlesex and Somerset Counties (please note it is the virus and not the nurse that is running rampant).

After all the negativity and anger that came from my last blog I have decided to make this one a little more positive. This is not some Zen mission to balance the universe or to keep my yang up relative to my yin. It’s just that too much bad energy is not good for the stomach and right now, in that area, I am operating at a deficit. I can ill afford to make the situation any worse.

So in an effort to turn lemons into lemonade (according to my friend “The Weezie” you also need to add Vodka) I have decided to do something uplifting with this current bout of not so comfortable down time that nature has chosen to afford me.

If you are having a hard time with this self-help version of Mike Cruickshank just try to think of me like you own personal Tony Robbins, minus the gigantism. Now here are two sickly sweet, life affirming things I have come to realize (despite having spent the better part of the last two days counting the cracks in the bathroom tile).

1. If you don’t have your health, you don’t have anything:
In the movie Godfather Part II, Hyman Roth commented that he would give 4 million to be able to take a piss without it hurting. I get that.
There are very few iron clad laws that pertain to this poop sandwich we call existence. One of them is gravity but a close second would be the debilitating nature of disease. When you are sick there is a very strong potential for that sickness to take almost complete control of your life. I would imagine this would be ten times more so if you had a chronic illness like Aids, Cancer or Multiple Sclerosis.

The ultimate problem with any of these words of wisdom is that they are meaningless unless you can connect with them on a personal level. I would never claim to be the person who could teach you how to do that. Likewise I wouldn’t want you to have to wait until something bad happens before you can connect those dots (thanks to Scott Abel for that last line).

My only suggestion is the next time you are frolicking around, admiring the shape of a beautiful person (or a sunrise for you more repressed types), or enjoying the flavor of your favorite wonderful food, try to imagine for one second that you can’t. If you have a hard time conceptualizing that then just think of how many baby back ribs a person could pound down while nauseous with chemo and radiation treatments. Or how many beautiful people at the beach or bird watching a person takes in when they have Macular Degeneration. How much running around do you think you are going to do when Multiple Sclerosis has taken your muscles out from underneath you.

It’s definitely something to think about. Maybe it will work, maybe it won’t. It’s worth a shot.

2. Gatorade actually serves a purpose:
Granted that purpose is limited to two things with one of them being a bad case of diarrhea. The second is if you are doing heavy physical labor for several hours under hot and humid conditions. When it comes to the later please understand the following. Sitting on the nautilus leg extension machine in a climate controlled gym does not count as heavy physical labor under hot and humid conditions.

I guess what really has always chapped my ass about Gatorade is more how it is marketed and misused but then again the two probably go hand in hand. Just so we can set the record straight, Gatorade does not make Derek Jeter or Michael Jordan great (nor does it make them sweat green, which sounds more like a liver condition). Too much of it would more likely give them some acid reflux than anything else.

Also, there is not a widespread pandemic of electrolyte deficiency in this country. With the way those commercials carry on you would think that electrolytes are scarcer than a seated toilet in Japan (if you don’t know what that reference means please don’t ask).

The bottom line is that Gatorade is really just a tool. Now granted when I was a kid it came in only one flavor, Lemon Lime Green Death, was dispensed in a small glass bottle and tasted awful. But it does serve its purpose when applied to the right person in the right situation. I could actually go for some right now but that has more to do with my potty issues and less to do with any desire to play in the NFL.

Conclusion

If neither of these makes sense or if they come across as silly and trite please note that I am a little new to this whole self-help thing. Granted there could have been more content here but there is only so much that I can do from the semi prone position. Personally I always thought of the average self-help author as a publicly accepted drug pusher. Instead of using coke, crack or heroin they chose to deal in false hope. So in that sense I never had much of a taste for the subject.

But then again what the hell do I know.

Yours in Chocolate Chip Cookies (not now but maybe in a couple of days),

Mike Cruickshank