{"id":823,"date":"2024-08-07T08:51:51","date_gmt":"2024-08-07T08:51:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/simonfokt.org\/?p=823"},"modified":"2024-08-11T09:03:56","modified_gmt":"2024-08-11T09:03:56","slug":"from-near-death-to-new-life-a-tale-of-love-and-friendship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/simonfokt.org\/index.php\/2024\/08\/07\/from-near-death-to-new-life-a-tale-of-love-and-friendship\/","title":{"rendered":"From Near-Death to New Life: A Tale of Love and Friendship"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

My 40th birthday party didn\u2019t start the way I was hoping it to. It certainly didn\u2019t end well\u2014 unless you really like hospitals. But I still had a fantastic time and ended feeling loved and cared for like never before.<\/strong> This is the story of how friendship is everything.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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When we turned 18, my one-week-senior best friend and I organised a weekend camping party. Some 40 geeky teenagers walked for 15km from a train station to play games, drink, and be silly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was such a blast that we never stopped. In Polish, when a party is great and you want to keep partying, the next weekend you organise \u2018Poprawiny<\/a>\u2019 \u2014 an \u2018Amendment Party\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We didn\u2019t do one the following week, but we did next year. And every year since (except 2020, may it be forgotten). If we stopped and started aging normally, we\u2019d both be 40 this year. Thank gods for amendment parties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And thus it has been year after year: Thursday to Sunday, friends, forest, meadow, lake, tents, vans, bonfire, making music, and just long summer days of blissful nothing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I soon moved to Scotland, but every summer I came back to Poland to host it. I remember the time when the first child appeared at the party \u2014 he\u2019s 14 now and he\u2019s been there pretty much every year of his life. In time, there were more families, dogs, new partners\u2026 The party became a time-lapse of our lives, an annual snapshot of friends who kept changing yet still wanted to stick around. New people appear, others move on, but a core group of about 20 who were there from the start remains. Some I only see this one time a year, but when we do, it\u2019s like no time has passed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This year was shaping up great, with a larger-than-usual crowd and people who decided to come back after years of absence. It could have been our 40th, after all. Even if we\u2019re celebrating a few days after my best friend\u2019s and a few before my actual birthdays. I couldn\u2019t wait.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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One of the first to arrive was a lover of mine<\/a> from Berlin. We went skinny dipping in the lake, we swam around enjoying the perfect summer day and as we were drying ourselves she said:\u00a0Simon, what is this?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was a ring on my thigh. A red ring surrounding the place where a couple weeks back a tick bit me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I had it tested a few days before, too. There was no ring then and the test came back negative. Turns out, antibody tests suck.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have Lyme disease.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Don\u2019t panic. My parents\u2019 good friends are doctors. I called them and quickly got an e-prescription for a course of Doxycycline. Another friend was just arriving via a nearby town and picked it up for me from the pharmacy. I could take the first dose within a couple hours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He enquired after a list of the things I shouldn\u2019t do while taking it. All of which were exactly the things I wanted to do this weekend:<\/p>\n\n\n\n