I went to Florence to see Renaissance art, but all I got was this lousy pneumonia

I haven’t liked my writing much recently. I feel that I have so much to write about, so much that I have observed around me, so much that I want to put into words. But when I start putting these ideas on a page, a part of me falters and fails to translate the words floating in my head into words on the computer screen.

But there is no time like the present, because at the present I am home sick with pneumonia, which is giving  me the lung capacity of a chain-smoking octogenarian and which has put me on bedrest. It’s awful. I feel like I am under house arrest – a strange, self-imposed house arrest, because I do try to escape, I really do, but even going down three flights in my building to take out the trash makes my chest heave for air. So I am resigned to sitting under a blanket (because Shanghai is cold), being licked by my dog (because she is maniac who is beyond herself that I’m home), and trying to do work in a semi-coherent state (which has proven fruitless).

I was excited to go to Italy. I really was. I had never visited before and we were going for a week of being surrounded by Renaissance masters and eating olives in any size and form. My heart was aching for the bowls of pasta and bottles (bottles!) of wine that I was to devour. In retrospect I may have moved too fast.

By day two, I was delirious with a fever and my left chest was throbbing with a stabbing ache. By day five I hobbled through the Duomos and the Uffizi Gallery. By day seven, I was back in Shanghai, with an x-ray confirming a pneumonia diagnosis, and a prescription for enough antibiotics to sterilize my entire body. By day eight, I was on bedrest.

And I’m still on bedrest. Shanghai is re-awakening after spring festival, but I am stuck at home, stress-baking blueberry muffins and slowly getting back to my blog.