If I was flying high this past Sunday, in the wake of my voice recital,  I was brought back down to earth Monday morning, thanks to a doctor’s appointment and a pair of numbers that were dropped on my head like two bowling balls:  my blood pressure numbers.   I was diagnosed with high blood pressure a couple of years ago, and because this was a big health issue of my mother’s,  the diagnosis was not a huge surprise.   My doctor prescribed medication for me and almost right away the numbers came way down…  which in turn led me to put the pills away and forget about them.  Dumb dumb dumb dumb.  Two years later, my b.p. is even higher than it was back then.  I don’t feel like parading the numbers for the whole world to see,  but I will offer this clue:   If blood pressure numbers are like hymns in the Lutheran Book of Worship,   you want your top number to be Lent  and the bottom number to be Christmas or Epiphany.   But unfortunately,  my top number is around All Saints Day and my bottom number is Lent…   much higher than they should be.  So I am back on my medication and also committed to taking off some of the weight that I have managed to gain back over the past few months –   and when those numbers come back down to normal,  I will absolutely NOT declare myself cured and put those pills away.

By the way,  as I walked out of the doctor’s office with my tail between my legs,  I realized that I was right around the corner from Wheaton Franciscan Hospital where my friend Walter Hermanns had been for the last several days.  He had gone into the hospital for what turned out to be two very serious infections which sent his body temperature plunging to 89 degrees.  (He told me that they went through six thermometers before they found one that went low enough to register his temperature.)    By the time I saw Walter Monday morning,  his temp was back around where it was supposed to be,  but he was utterly depleted from all he had been through and scarcely able to move.  As I sat at his bedside,  Walter was asking me how my recital had gone- sincerely interested despite all that he had been through and was still facing.   It was SO Walter!   And it reminded me of something that I have long admired about Walter in the years since his MS diagnosis.  For as much as this disease has come to dominate so much of Walter’s life, it does not define him-  and for all the ways in which Walter’s life has been drastically changed,  he is still the same wonderful Walter.    And although I can’t even remember now exactly what he said to me in our short conversation,  I walked out of there feeling a whole lot better than I did when I walked in.  .  .

All Saints Day and Lent notwithstanding.