A British Prime Minister, Harold MacMillan, was once asked what was the most important thing in politics, “Events, dear boy, events”, he replied. Over the years I have come to believe that the same is true of life in general. We can make all the plans we like, but it is how we respond to events that becomes key.
My event of the moment is called Bell’s Palsy. Before we flew to Chile I had anticipated a mix of holiday in the sun, some time spent getting a feel of whether I would actually like to live and work here and some time to think through some more ideas about purposive drift. Instead, the day before we were due to fly I found the right hand side of my face paralysed – just like a visit to the dentist, only I hadn’t been to the dentist.
Perhaps foolishly, I decided to fly anyway.
And so I find myself having a very different time in Chile from that I had anticipated. The focus of my concerns has shifted to coming to terms with having Bell’s Palsy and how best to deal with it.
Bell’s Palsy is a curious condition. It is diagnosed by exclusion – in other words nobody knows its cause – though the key suspect is a viral infection. Its most obvious symptom is paralysis of one side of the face, because an important nerve is damaged or impaired. Essentially there is no treatment other than rest.
Most of the medical information focuses on the paralysis of the face and the need to take care of the eye on the affected side because it doesn’t close properly and because of that can become infected. What seems to be less mentioned is how appallingly ill you can feel – well at least this is how it has affected me.
So my best days have been spent sleeping and dozing, with occasional trips to the balcony of our apartment to look out at the waves rolling in from the Pacific and breaking on the rocks of our bay and watching the little dramas and stories of life on the sea front.
Since New Year’s Eve I have felt dramatically better, the sense of continually fatigue seems, for the moment, to have lifted and I have more movement in the right hand side of my face. But, while I am enjoying this sense of improvement, I am not counting on it continuing without set back – my experience so far is that while a general trend of getting better can seen, its progress is very up and down, two steps forward, one step back.
So are there any lessons to be learnt from this experience. Probably not, other than the one I began with, the need to account of and deal with – “Events, dear boy, events.”