To your health

I have tried very hard to stay away from any discussion of the current presidential election. While I am sure my preference is clear to most everyone who knows me, I also know that I have friends whose intentions are every bit as honorable as mine but may see the world somewhat differently.

But this is not about who we are going to elect as the next leader of our country. The news reports over the last two days have been dominated by an incident that occurred at the 9/11 Memorial on Sunday. Standing in the hot sun in lower Manhattan, Hillary Clinton nearly fainted. As it turned out, she had just days earlier been diagnosed with and was under treatment for pneumonia. Rather than do the sensible and intelligent thing one might expect of an extremely bright woman and take off a couple of days, she seemed to feel compelled to take on the “macho” role and pretend she could simply push through her illness.

You can probably hear from my tone that I am rather peeved about this. Because, to be honest, I played that game myself a few years ago, and not a day goes by that I do not ponder the alternative outcomes that might have been had I paid attention to the clear signals rather than pretended to ignore them. Perhaps the damage to my cognitive function would have been less, and I would have been able to make a fuller return to my previous life.

My pulmonologist had been begging me to slow down for a few years before the cancer diagnosis. What if the CNS lymphoma had never occurred? At what point was I going to completely run my pulmonary function into the ground? The catastrophic infection she continues to fear may well have already occurred, and at the very least your Inbox would be a bit less full.

So my message to Hillary and Donald is this: the human body is not a limitless machine that continues to run at your will. Pay attention. You both have the highest possible ambitions, but you have to be alive and healthy to realize them. I do not hear anything telling me that either of you is unable to physically take on the responsibilities of POTUS, but I also do not hear anything telling me that either of you is a superhuman being. Use the brains that have gotten you this far to keep you on track. The cost of a few days off the campaign trail is minor compared to many of the alternatives.

Love,

Rebecca