Today Is Here, Who Knows About Tomorrow?

The good news: Google doesn't know everything.

This morning I woke up, which is a good thing that so many people take for granted. Okay, I'm appreciative of that. But, being spoiled by a relatively easy time of it -- no starvation, no evil dictator ordering me flogged for having extramarital sex, a roof over my head, etc. -- I have to add that it's not all roses in my life. For some unknown reason my face is swollen, something that I noticed as I was getting ready for bed last night.

I'm thinking it's an allergic reaction to something I ate, although I have no known allergies. But perhaps one is starting, which happened to my husband about 15 years ago. For years Mitch could eat salmon but didn't really like it, until one day, after eating salmon at a friend's wedding, his face swelled up so much he looked like he was wearing one of those fat suits they use in the movies to make thin people appear obese.  Since then he does not eat salmon.

Naturally I ran down a mental list of foods I ingested yesterday and came up with the only possible culprit: hot Italian sausage, an ingredient in the pasta sauce Mitch made for our dinner guests last night.  I never cared for sausage, not quite understanding just what part of whose body it comes from. That made me uncomfortable. Now I have an official reason not to eat it.

Unless it's not the sausage and I have the beginning of one of those terrible "rare diseases" you never hear about, like incipient balloon face, a.k.a, balloonus facial incipientus, and my face is going to expand to the size of a balloon and then pop. Who knows? As my father would say, "It could happen."

This is why I give generously to the National Organization for Rare Disorders, or NORD. There are more than 30 million Americans affected by one or more of nearly 7,000 rare diseases that never make the news. These are serious illnesses that lack catchy slogans, logos, annual marathons and celebrity endorsements. People suffer under the radar and hardly anyone hears about them, while breast cancer, prostate cancer, ALS and other more recognizable diseases get all the research dollars. 

December is almost halfway over, so get out your checkbook and donate to NORD today for a deduction on this year's taxes. Or just go to www.rarediseases.org. You never know what tomorrow morning will bring. If you wake up, that is.