This is just a tough week. My health stuff has been forcing me to push everything else aside – because as some of you know, you only have enough energy for one thing each day, and that is if you are lucky.

I had to go into the surgeon’s office today like I have done every single day since last Tuesday to get my wound checked and repacked. I’m actually a “super healer” and for that reason also very rare. My body immediately goes to town on closing up wounds and building scar tissue – collagen – so it’s yelling last call and shutting the doors before all of the riff raff has exited. The downfall to that is that my body trapped bacteria in its rush to seal everything, which is why the doc had to make hamburger out of my ass. This is also the reason why, when my body figures out that it can’t physically break every shunt, it resorts to clogging and strangling the drainage catheter. I don’t make keloids. However, I have a huge wad of scar tissue on the right side of my brain left over from the cisternoperitoneal shunts I had implanted there. If I press on that side of the skull, I move the whole mass and it’s very uncomfortable, as if I am moving strings that are attached on the inside of my scalp that reach down into my brain.

While I was getting ready to go to show my ass yet again, I was catching up on the news, and so saw the announcement that Alan Rickman died from cancer at 69. Like Bowie, he was another Brit with loads of talent, adopted and adored by us fickle Americans across the pond. This seemed like another abrupt loss that we didn’t see coming – I mean, some people shouldn’t ever die, right?

Like a lot of people in the U.S., my big intro to this man was the role of Hans Gruber in “Die Hard.” He was such a good badass. I didn’t want him to be killed off. I wanted him to return for every installment of that franchise.

About seven years later while I was living in Albuquerque, my roommate introduced me to “Truly, Madly, Deeply” via a VHS tape she had in her vast movie collection. It was a role that allowed me to see past his villainous past and embrace his gentler side, and roll around in his deep voice like a dog rejoicing in sunshine and grass. If God actually existed and had pipes, I do believe that we would hear Alan Rickman speaking.

In 2003, I moved to Arizona without knowing a single person, without having a place to live and without having a job. (Things were really different back then, kids!) A few weeks after I landed, “Love Actually” was released to the theaters for the Christmas holiday. I didn’t have anyone to go with, so for the first time in my life I went to a movie by myself. I’m glad I did – I liked the movie enough to buy, which rarely happens. But Alan was part of the ensemble cast. He played well the role of a man who was befuddled by the temptation placed in front of him and who ultimately could not rise above.

I know this makes me an oddball (judging by just how popular the Harry Potter series has been), but I could never get into the Harry Potter movies. So many people are mourning the loss of Professor Snape; I will instead choose to remember Hans, Jamie and Harry.