Adventures & Appendectomies?

I should have been on a flight to the Yukon on Wednesday. I was meant, by now, to be sitting on a river with bears. I was, instead, lying on an operating table getting an emergency appendectomy. Don’t let anyone tell you the life of a photographer isn’t full of adventure. Oh, the romance of it all! Timing couldn’t have been worse. Or better, really. My appendix could have ruptured while I was in Zimbabwe last week, or while sitting on the Nakina River with a helicopter as my only means of extraction. I’m disappointed to the point of tears that I’m not with the bears, but so grateful that the worst of this was really just the pain of it (and that the ambulance didn’t use its sirens, which feels a little like they weren’t taking this seriously). Still, I’m missing my work—and the bears—and I don’t do well sitting around doing nothing, which is what I’m doing now. Well, not exactly nothing. At least I have you to talk to, and a new book to finish. And painkillers, which should make the…