I have been hearing wonderful things about the YA novel “Going Bovine.”

I spend a lot of time haunting the children’s section in the local public library, so when I saw a copy on the new arrivals bookshelf, I snatched it up.

It took me several weeks before I had a chance to pick it up and begin reading it. In fact I had to renew it once or twice. I had a huge stack of books on my to-be-read pile, so it took a bit for me to work my way down to it.

It was not my type of book. I mean, usually I am a bit more of an escapist in my reading material, I like bits of magic and fantasy. I’m not much into the teenage angst stuff, most likely because I have an emo teen occupying a room in my home at the moment. There is only so much angst and drama any one adult can deal with and remain relatively sane.

But, the writing was well crafted and there was more than one well turned phrase, so I figured I would persevere and maybe learn something about craft and “what sells” to use in my own writing.

I determined to read two or three chapters a night for my before sleep treat.

I followed through until last night. (SPOILER ALERT) The main character was diagnosed with a terminal illness and was admitted to the hospital.

I couldn’t read any further. My own stint in the hospital is still raw. It will be a year at the end of this month, but I still can’t watch some hospital scenes on TV either.

I closed the book in the middle of a chapter, in the middle of a sentence. And cried myself to sleep.

Now, I did not have a terminal disease (obviously cause I am not dead and/or dying) but I did almost die because of someone else’s actions. I went to surgery directly from walking into the emergency room. And spent almost two weeks in recovery, and months beyond that getting back to ‘normal.’

I am not usually one to dwell on the past. I am just too busy most of the time to worry about more than what I have right in front of me. So this nagging phobia of hospitals and emergency rooms and surgery is troublesome, to say the least.

Hopefully, this will pass. Before I need surgery again. Which I am told I do. For completely unrelated things. Honestly, I have too much to do to lose more time in a lengthy recovery.