Sculpin

Occasionally if I take my pills too close to bedtime, I get some pretty unpleasant heartburn. I did that today, and then there were those delicious leftover potatoes that I was too foolish to ignore. Ow. Dumb of me.

Propping myself up in a comfy chair was not as comfortable as I’d like, so I went googling for home remedies for heartburn. Turns out that licorice is one such remedy. As it happens, I had a package of Zagarese licorice tronchettini which I’d bought not for their herbal properties but because they’re weirdly delicious. It’s an acquired taste. They’re small pellets of licorice extract with a little added citrus flavor. This sounded a heck of a lot more pleasant than breaking out the baking soda, and therefore worth trying.

I will be damned. It worked, and it was fast about it. After ten tronchettini and five or ten minutes, about 90% of the discomfort is gone, which is easily enough to let me go back to bed. Hooray! Goodnight!

(But first, let me note that herbs are not necessarily safe. Licorice in particular should probably not be used by people who have high blood pressure or heart disease or who are pregnant, unless under medical supervision — and even then I’d wonder. My blood pressure tends to be quite low, but still I personally would not indulge in genuine whole licorice extract every day for more than a few days. You likely know or can guess all this stuff, but I feel I should say it anyway. Blah blah, natural doesn’t mean safe, blah blah.)

I’ve just been swapping email with an old acquaintance with whom I’d lost touch. He’s got cancer. It sounds like it’s being treated well and he’s in good spirits. Still, I have to ask — what the hell? What the hell is with the cancer, people? Among my acquaintances, this is the seventh case in the last few years.

Someone I knew a little and liked a lot died several months ago of cancer. Hodgkin’s lymphoma, of all the crappy things to die of — no health insurance and no money meant that she didn’t get diagnosis and treatment until it had reached stage IV. Hodgkin’s lymphoma is tremendously treatable if it’s caught early, even semi-early. Lots of people recover fully. If she had lived in a country with universal health care, Sybil might well be alive and happy today and finishing her first book.

I haven’t discussed it in my journal before because it seemed like every goddamn few months this year somebody got a cancer diagnosis, and I did not want to break out the scary. But I think of her. A few days ago there was a perfect crisp fall day, one of those days when the wind comes up and the light is sparkling, the kind of day you might wait for all through a hot August. Sybil would have loved it.