Video Of The Week: Counting Crows

To say I was never a Counting Crows fan is an understatement; at best, I dislike some of their songs, hate the rest. I'm not particularly fond of this one - A Long December - either, although having singer Adam Duritz' then-girlfriend Courteney Cox play in it (in a rare dramatic role) is a plus.

But the lyrics are a fair reflection of my month so far, as I spent the first 12 days of December (and the last two of November) in the hospital, clinging onto my very life for the first half, as a first-diagnosed/third-in-total acute pancreatitis mixed with undiagnosed and out-of-control diabetes threatened to destroy the rest of my insides while they, themselves, were keeping me dehydrated, weak, in pain even morphine couldn't calm, and unable to recover through enough food intake (the IV was insufficient for my physical mass) or sleep; however, with a tremendous team of nurses and caretakers working around-the-clock to try to bring my condition from ''critical'' to ''stable'', which came last Friday, December 7th, I pulled through with accolades (one doctor said I was ''as strong as a horse'' with that being the only reason I made it through), excitement, relief, and - at least one doctor admitted - shock and disbelief.

I don't ever want to put my mother through this again.

All in all, it marked a full calendar year of things turning to shit for me, which is where some words from this song started to make (too much) sense:

A long December and there's reason to believe
Maybe this year will be better than the last
I can't remember the last thing that you said as you were leavin'
Now the days go by so fast (...)
The smell of hospitals in winter
And the feeling that it's all a lot of oysters, but no pearls
All at once you look across a crowded room
To see the way that light attaches to a girl (...)
I guess the winter makes you laugh a little slower,
Makes you talk a little lower about the things you could not show her
And it's been a long December and there's reason to believe
Maybe this year will be better than the last
I can't remember all the times I tried to tell my myself
To hold on to these moments as they pass

I don't know if next year will be better than the last. I can't. No one can. But I can hope. And I can tell myself life doesn't always have to be about hitting rock bottom.

I'm not out of the woods yet; my pancreas will never heal back, my diabetes is permanent (and not yet under control), I don't have the physical strength to walk more than 50 feet without feeling lightheaded or flat-out fall to the ground as I did today, in public, in front of 20-or-so people in shock. But there are things I can do, and things I still have left to say and write about.

As long as I'm still around, I'll keep expressing myself the one way I know how - through words, be they in songs, on paper or online. I ain't dead yet.

Oh, and neither are the Counting Crows, by the way, still touring though they've seen a number of line-up changed through the years.