In sickness and in health – writing during illness

Last week, I had a health crisis and ended up in A&E. I was admitted to urgent care in this instance as a short stay patient. I will not go into the details of my illness – I feel it’s too personal to share with the world at large – but the scare as a result of this got me thinking about my own mortality. In the days that followed, after I was recuperating back home with some pretty powerful medicine, I had an existential crisis of sorts.

There are only 2 times in my life where I really believed that I might die. Both times involved me being hospitalised. If, like me, you have ever had a brush with death (I am touching wood for you, and myself, as I write this) then you’ll know it gets you thinking about what is really important. Family comes out tops, for sure, especially if you have a young child. I admit I didn’t even think about my writing while I was in the middle of hospital, but I did think about those dearest to me.

I took several days off writing to reflect on my health crisis before getting stuck back into my 3 WIPs. Writing is important to me and there are many more stories I wish to share with the world before I die. Is that melodramatic? Maybe, now that I am clearly out of danger and writing this post.

Nevertheless, whether depressing or not, thinking of my own limited time on earth has its advantages. It keeps me focused on the important people and important things in my life. I really feel like I got some serious, quality writing done over the past few days because I really felt like I needed to get those words out of my head. At least, before they end up disappearing into the ether.

Let’s not end on a downer though, eh? Life is about making the most of the time we have on this wonderful planet. I am thankful to be a thinking animal, and one who is able to put my ideas into words, and those words onto a computer screen, and that screen into pages of a book. Just hope you like those words when you get round to perusing them, Dear reader! On another interesting note, the book I was reading in hospital – True tales of the Supernatural from the UK and Ireland – finished with a ghostly hospital tale. ‘No scan Do’ was the last chapter of the book, as pictured above. It kept me distracted while in hospital, and helped me reach book 6 out of 25 on my Goodreads Challenge this year.