Almost Dead
By the winter of 2004 I was almost dead. My daughter was in college; my older son was in his mid-teens and getting into the teenager thing; my younger son was 12 and starting a rock band. The US had made a full-scale invasion, which they called a "liberation", of Iraq. I was in the depths of my despair and cared little about anything besides getting through my day as painlessly as possible. My wife had taken up racquetball. She and her friend Joanne played several times a week and we're passionate about the game. She worked hard at her racquetball game but, to her chagrin, she could not hold a candle to either me or our 12-year-old son on the racquetball court. We played frequently throughout the winter. It was good exercise and a great calorie burn. During the months of January and February the fingers in my left hand started tingling. I wasn't sure what to make of this. Perhaps it was just cold, and my circulation was poor. I continued my wretched ea