Wolf

I have held off on writing this post, first out of sheer exhaustion and then out of a sense that life has hurtled so far into the territory of the absurd that sharing this news would prompt universal incredulity. I started thinking about the boy who cried wolf and wondered what would have happened at the end of the story if the boy had been telling the truth all along.

Then I started thinking about the old episode of M*A*S*H in which Klinger tries, for the umpteenth time, to get out of the Army. He walks into Colonel Blake's office with a letter from home about one or another of his relatives being ill or having died. The letter is fake, of course.

Blake looks at him, unimpressed, then pulls out a file from his desk and starts reviewing all of the other letters that Klinger has presented to him: father dying, mother dying, both parents dying, mother dying and older sister pregnant, and on an on. Then he gets to the last letter in the file.

"An oldie and a goodie," he says. "Half the family dying, the other half pregnant." The camera pans to Klinger's defeated face.

Let me be clear: No one is dying. (No one is pregnant, either.)

But Zach is now in the hospital, with a flare-up of diverticulitis. He started having attacks about 10 years ago, a good 30 years earlier than average. (We are both, it seems, medically precocious.) They were few and far between for a long time, but they began to get more severe and more frequent in 2003.

The worst attack happened that December, in the middle of the night, in the middle of a blizzard, about 12 hours before we were expecting 40 guests for a holiday party. Zach had made homemade gravlax and had smoked a tenderloin for the occasion. It was the first time I ever had to call 911.

A few months later, after a generous supply of Cipro had gotten him through his first leading role in a regional-theater production, Zach finally had surgery. Because of his age and the severity of his case, it was really the only option. The surgery went well, and it appeared to have cured him. He had had no trouble at all in the three years since.

Until last weekend.

Fortunately, he was home for a visit at the time. Unfortunately, it meant we spent about six hours in the ER on Saturday night, waiting for blood tests and X-rays and a CT scan. Once the tests confirmed the diagnosis, we had to wait another couple of hours for a bed to become available. That finally happened at about 2:30 a.m.

Zach is actually doing pretty well, as these things go. He's on IV antibiotics, but he hasn't needed any pain medication since late Saturday night. The major bummer (aside from being in the hospital) is that he wasn't allowed to eat for 72 hours while the infection and the pain quieted down. As of this morning, however, he is on clear liquids, which will give way to regular liquids, probably by tonight, and then, if all goes well, to soft, bland foods tomorrow. He should be home in another day or two and able to fly back to L.A. a day or two after that.

In the meantime, if you'd like to send him a get-well message, you can do that here.

And just because turnabout is fair play, here's a photo of Zach with his IV pole:

I wish I had some hard-earned wisdom to share after this latest episode of life kicking us in the teeth (or, in Zach's case, the gut). The truth is I don't. Maybe that will come in time. For now, I am just trying to keep it together, as much as possible.

And hoping that no one ever again asks, "So, what's new?"