8 May 1958
Kurt has just left. The puckered anal ring upon waking had me worried. The bowel movement was tight, finally explosive, with some blood at this late date. I cried with nervous jitters, wondering what was wrong now.
Kurt tried to make me see the situation objectively, saying “Call the doctor if you are worried. Find out whether anything is wrong. Etc.”
All I could do was feel scared and mean toward him until my better judgment begged me to listen to him. The thought of something wrong and the horror of a visit to Dr. Thomas waned a bit after Kurt insisted I take a pain pill and stop worrying about it, telling me to call the doctor’s office later on this morning when the office was open, if I needed additional reassurance. “I don’t know what to tell you” he said.
Poor Kurt. He sure has a time with me. But I told him, “After all this damnable pain, I just can’t face up to anything more going wrong.”
He said, “You’re in for it, and whatever comes, you’ve just got to see it through.”
Very sensible, but I just couldn’t couldn’t be sensible. He gave me a handkerchief and I had a bit of a crying jag.
Oh! Well!!
Now it is 8 AM and I’m sitting here with this trusty old notebook, a bit calmer, but still jittery.
I hope all I did was break open an adhesion in the straining of the bowel movement. I’ll have to call Dr. Thomas’ office later to check out what I am taking and drinking, with him, to make sure of whether I am doing the right thing. I don’t believe he will be at the office until the afternoon, but I’ll call this morning and talk with Mrs. Thomas. If she is alone she may have the time to explain to me, without a rush of patients in the office to care for, whether I’m using the proper home procedure.
Later: 5 PM
Darwin may have a little something with his “survival of the fittest,” but he is not completely right by a long shot!! What he neglects to bring into his theory is chance. When he gives no cognition to chance, he is only potentially right. Why this element of “by accident,” or “by plain luck” or “by plain chance,” his survival theory doesn’t hold much water.
If a hundred men just happened to be where a bomb explodes, one by one going in a line, their orders are to proceed to a certain point. The individual, no matter how well-trained he alone is to survive, does not have his own fate in his hand. He must obey military orders. If he just happens to be over the bomb when it blows up, no amount of survival training under the circumstances will save him. He will be blown to smithereens.
There are just some things one has no control over – man-made, nature made, or creative force made, which cannot escape from. Freak accidents are in this category.
Survival, yes, we try to survive, but these are times when factors which we could not have by any survival technique generally known under certain circumstances which can prevent the occurrence of an event.
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Darwin is only partially correct and only under certain limited areas.
