Bad Enough to Wish I'd been Bitten

Pastor Dan
Fox River Valley QZ
Eastern Wisconsin

Over the last few months I have watched society collapse under the weight of the dead and dying. I have watched friends die, lost contact with loved ones. I have watched as the faithful who look to me for leadership lost their faith under the crushing weight of their losses. I have watched others look at my faith as a cause of heavy suspicion, and I have watched as other clergy, supposedly my colleagues in ministry, do the things that earn such suspicion.

This seems horrible to say... but the worst of it came this past week. I had a kidney stone.

It seems so damned stupid. Our QZ is well stocked with food and clean water and is adequately defended from the dead. I have food to eat and work to occupy my time, and even this thing to share my thoughts. But as the stone passed through my system, the pain made me think that I wished I had been one of those lost over the last few months.

Drugs were in short supply, too. The medics we have on staff muttered about the treatments they'd be prescribing had this happened just six months earlier, but now we had so little to work with. Our pain meds are so heavily rationed. I should have received a major narcotic with vicodin as needed. Instead? One vicodin dose every 24 hours. Three to four hours of minor relief followed by twenty hours of agony. They put me in a hot water bath in hopes of relaxing my muscles to help the stone pass more easily... if it helped, I couldn't tell. I think they just did it so that they could say they had done something. 

The stone is passed, now, and I am slowly regaining my strength. The Commandant even said I didn't need to rejoin the runners for a few more days.

So I'm still here. The QZ is fine. I'll just... be a little while recovering.