Merriam-Webster Online (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fortnight) provides basic etymology: “Middle English fourtenight, alteration of fourtene night, from Old English fēowertȳne niht fourteen nights”.
There you have it. “Fourteen Nights”. Clear. Simple. Could hardly be more obvious. That is, unless you think about it for a moment. I mean, here we got “fortnight”. OK, but then why isn’t there a “fiftnight”. And a “sixtnight”. “Seventnight”. Etc. you get the picture. The real question, the one nobody’s answering, is why does “Fourteen Nights” get its own special pop-quiz-in-the-high-school-vocabulary-class meaning when so many (well, all, really) other aggregations of nights don’t get squat?
I’m not prepared to answer. And neither, near as I can tell, is Merriam-Webster. If I was inclined to conspiracy theorizing (which I’m generally not, although I love collecting other people’s conspiracy theories. And I’m quite capable of pasting together quasi-credible conspiracy theories of my own, which I find to be entertaining as a dilettante artistry outlet for my rich-but-rather-jumbled-and-nonlinear grab-bag of stream-of-consciousness), I might discern The Hand of Satan, or perhaps some convoluted Vulcan mind-meld of Free Masons, Daughters of the American Revolution, Elk’s Club, Webelos, the Isaac Walton League, the Illuminati, the Trilateral Commission, all converging on Alex Jones’ broadcast studio with intent to propagate rumors of the “End Times” and so sell more of their pre-packaged “New World Order Survival Kits” containing bottled water, canned beef stew, dried apricots, fish hooks, and a pack of AA batteries, all compiled weekly from the local Wal Mart and sold over the web to the almost 60% (!!!) of U.S. citizens who don’t believe in evolution but who do believe that the government they deride as moribund and incompetent faked the moon landings on a sound stage in a back alley near the “China Town” gate in Los Angeles.
Umm…ok, where were we before we got off on that worrisome tangent? Oh, I know. Fortnight. Two weeks. Here’s why I dragged you through all that crap in the paragraphs immediately above.
For the past couple of weeks I’ve been feeling pretty crappy. No longer getting stronger every day, I was in fact getting weaker. Throat sore and bloody. Energy level, nonexistent. Constantly nauseous. Could not get close to the volume of U.N. emergency rations needed to maintain my body weight. Could not get any thing done. Not even writing. And when I’m having trouble writing, you KNOW something is seriously wrong.
So we set up an appointment with my palliative care guy, Dr. S. I had seen him just 3 or 4 weeks ago, so he was surprised to find me back in his office. I went through the list of problems with him. He quizzed me a bit. Pulled out my (now very thick and ungainly) file, reviewed the latest dozen pages.
I noted that in a few weeks, I would be heading for the beaches of the Outer Banks. This energized him. “OK” he said. “We have to get you feeling as good as you can feel so you enjoy your vacation”. With this goal firmly in mind, we went down my list of medications. Zofran for nausea. Dilaudid for pain. Xanax and Duloxetine for depression and anxiety. THC for appetite and tension. Mertazepine for sleeping. And over-the-counter antihistamines and expectorants to get me through the night relatively dry, or at least not risking drowning in my own bodily secretions, a la several of the former drummers for Spinal Tap.
We re-jiggered some of the meds. Upped the dose of dilaudid. Added Reglan, another anti-nauseal that also enhances gut processes, in hopes that I could make my daily calorie minimum with less travail. And, most importantly, it turns out, put me on a new antibiotic. For some reason, Dr. S (and I believe that surgeon Dr. H would agree with him) was reluctant to treat my raw and bloody throat as if it were infected. I’m not completely sure why. We talked some about inducing drug resistance in my microbial flora, and considered the possibility that my throat might be chronically infected for rests of my life and would just have to become part of my “new normal” personal world. After much discussion, Dr. S came up with a new antibiotic that my internal microbial ecosystems had never seen. Suggested I try out the new drug regime and see how I feel. We agreed to meet again in a week (that would be this coming Wednesday) to review progress and decide what, if anything, more needed to be done to get me in condition to enjoy a comfortable, relaxing vacation.
So this is my third day on the antibiotic. The first couple days, the drug blitzed my throat infection. The alternation of bloody and foamy mucous with bloody and slimy mucous ceased, and the stink of the rotting throat tissues receded. Today, the infection seems to be fighting back a bit. There’s a little blood in my throat, mucous volume is increased (although nowhere near what it was before I started on the AB), and the weird onion/sulfur taste of my saliva returned, although again at a lower level than before.
But over all, Dr. S did a miracle job. Past two days I was full of energy. Went for long(ish) hikes at the Patuxent reserve, got back into writing, lined up some new art stuff to play with. Today I was just a bit less healthy. But I think I needed to take a break from the higher activity. My leg muscles were stiff and crampy, which is no surprise given that they’ve been parked in a recliner for weeks before I took them out for two days of walking. So today I stayed home, read more of the two new books on the Soviet/German front in World War Two, got in some serious guitar practice—almost an hour’s worth, before my fingers started to get raw and bloody.
So, if I continue to feel as good as I have the past few days, I’ll be back on the path to a more comfortable quality-of-life. And I’ll be more than ready to hit the beach. I can not wait to get cranking on some cooking, using the abundant produce of the Middle Atlantic summer. And to get out into the woodlands and wetlands of the OBX.
And if I do not continue to rock and roll toward a comfortable quality-of-life, why, I have the appointment already scheduled to take another shot at getting me there.
So, overall this has been a good week. With a little luck, next week will be even better. And a couple weeks after that, I’ll be stalking cottonmouths, kingsnakes, and legless lizards on Hatteras Island.
Awesome! My love and thanks to you all. Hope your summer is shaping up to be kicking ass and taking names. I know mine will.
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