Ask Richard on hiatus

Richard Wade is on sick leave as of Nov. 11:

I came home from the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear with some kind of bug. Extreme weakness and the highest fever I’ve ever had knocked me down like Mike Tyson hitting me with a George Foreman electric grill. After a few days I felt better and got active, resulting in a relapse that left me like Wile E. Coyote after the boulder falls on him from a mile up. A trip to urgent care rendered a diagnosis of pneumonia. Never had that before. Antibiotics made me feel better, so after a couple of days I got up and started doing things, which resulted in a relapse that had a similar effect on my skull as the two swinging logs on the Ewok planet coming together with the small Imperial Walker in the middle.

Okay, okay! I get it. This is going to take a long time. I can occasionally tap out a brief, trenchant comment from my laptop in bed, but then I have to take a nap, or start coughing and holding my head again. Anything requiring careful thought and lots of time typing is out for however long this will take.

I apologize to all the people who have written to Ask Richard. The letters come in two to three times faster than I can respond, privately or publicly, even when I’m healthy. Many of them are several months old, and I probably will never be able to answer all of them. I suppose that some writers have either given up or forgotten they wrote them.

It’s important for me to say that I read every one, and I care about the real people behind the words. My silence is not from not caring, it’s from being overwhelmed. This illness will only add to that.

I intend to resume the column, but it may be a little at a time. Writing this little 327-word post was exhausting. I have to lie back down now.

Richard