I hope you, my friends, know that I always like to answer all your comments promptly because I treasure your dialog and your well wishings. BTW, I have gone back and answered all your comments about Religion and Atheism.

Almost as soon as I wrote my last post I got sick again. The ear infection that has been plaguing me for about two weeks came back again and caused a full-body flu with horrible pain in my left ear.

I got stupid. I went swimming again as soon as I finished my course of antibiotics, not taking into account that the infection was not finished with me. I went to the doctor on Tuesday and sure enough it wasn't quite gone. So I got some Polysporin and went swimming for the next three days dunking my head, thinking that the dribbles of the Polysporin in my ear were taking care of things.

It kicked my ass to next Tuesday and high fived itself. I have a compromised immune system already because of my chronic pain.

Ear infections are nothing to laugh at and if allowed to go unchecked they can turn into an abcess on the brain and is an extra-ordin-arily ghastly, awful, terribly, sickly, painful way to die.

It can and has killed Kings.

King Francis, Mary Queen of Scot's first and beloved husband died this way.

When his father Henry II died in a jousting accident, Francis II was crowned King. His mother, Catherine de Medici, became regent of France because Francis was only 15 years old at the time of his father's death. It is said that she was regent in name only and the powerful Guises, Mary's uncles, were the real powers that governed France..

Francis, a sickly child from birth, suffered from chronic respiratory problems all of his life. One day, a chronic inflammation of the middle ear brought on by constant ear infections made him very ill. A huge swelling appeared behind his ear caused by the spreading of the inflammation/infection and his condition worsened. He died when an abscess formed in his brain as a result of the inflammation. Francis II, King of France died at the age of almost 17.




What this article snippet didn't say was just how much pain the poor King was when he died. He went out riding in the cold without a hat, as he always liked to do, and he came home complaining of yet another ear infection. Nobody took much notice because he had so many. It took him about three weeks to die of this horrible infection and he suffered a pain and a soaking feverish sweat which nothing could help. The infection becomes full body and it prostrates the victim. In the winter time, he had chills and sweats that nobody but other sufferers could possibly understand. Mary nursed him and was at his bedside until he died and it was actually a relief because he couldn't suffer anymore. She carried his picture and said often that this was her only true love.

It is interesting to note that all of Catherine D'Medici's children were sickly and nobody knows why. There are theories, not the least of which is that like most royals, she was an inbred moron. Another of them is because for the first ten years Catherine couldn't have any children. She took various herbs and other quack remedies to finally induce pregnancy. One she became pregnant, she was off to the races having 10 in rapid succession. But all ten children had health problems, both mental and physical and all but two of them predeceased her. Sure, some of them were murdered, but the ones who weren't died young and usually quite horribly. Ear infections, nasty swamp fevers from the Lowlands and 24 year old Charles died nastily in a bloody sweat.

So, I guess the moral of the story is this: don't be inbred and don't ignore those ear infections.

Bleah.