Via The Globe and Mail, an account that is more entertaining than the experience itself must have been: How I survived West Nile virus (at 85). The writer is Morley Torgov, a Canadian novelist. Excerpt:
Time and again, people of the cloth love to finger-waggingly remind us (as though we needed reminding) that we enter this world with nothing and we depart this world with nothing. But what about the time and space between the two nothings? What are we to do with a lifetime of accumulating hard assets and harder experience?
Lawyers offer us last wills and testaments; scientists offer theories and statistics; the clergy offer prayer. All to little or no avail. Life continues to be a daily craps game. Man plans and God laughs. Only one thing is certain: Something totally random is bound to occur and, for sure, the dice ain’t gonna come up lucky 7.
In my case the craps game came to an abrupt halt one Sunday in August last year. The cause: a mosquito bite – unseen, unheard, unfelt – that left me with a life-threatening case of West Nile virus.
