Now, before I go on, let me just note that I might not have survived these months without the help of my husband. But if he doesn’t already know how wonderful he is, I’ve screwed something up badly. This particular post isn’t about him.

It is a bit about my “meatspace” friends, though. It’s about the people I met years ago who have told me my welfare is still important to them. It’s about the ex-boyfriends who have reached out (almost uniformly) behind the scenes to tell me they’re keeping up and hoping things go well. It’s about the people I don’t see nearly often enough who have reminded me that they’re there. Not only if I decide I need them; just there. (And about the ones who say, “Hi. We’re showing up with soup tomorrow afternoon. We can’t stay, but we want to do something.”)

This little internet thing also means that when I do see the people I see regularly, the whole thing doesn’t get derailed by me having to tell them what’s going on. I’ve posted relevant blog updates to Facebook, which means I don’t have to tell the story over and over again each time I run into someone who sincerely wants to know, “How are you?” Even my mother knows she can get all the information she wants and more online. When we talk, we can talk about something else, something that doesn’t involve me being defined by illness.

Speaking of not being defined by illness, this internet thing is great for that too. I haven’t been blogging as much as usual (hanging out inside my head long enough to articulate what I think about a topic hasn’t always been appealing or possible), but I’ve still been able to argue about important things and trivial ones. People have sent me wonderful distractions, things to make me laugh or growl or think, both in response to requests and through the passive magic of Twitter and Facebook, which make healing time vanish (and any other time as well).

Then there are the people I don’t know in meatspace or have met only briefly after getting to know them online. I’ve been the recipient of virtual hugs (none of them the least bit squicky) from a remarkable number of countries. One person offered to travel halfway across the country if she could be useful here. A couple said, “Here’s my phone number if you need to call someone in the night. I probably won’t be asleep.” Others shared their stories so that neither of us would need to be so alone in this.

Jason put out the call to my minions (old joke) and reminded me I haven’t yet run out of SIWOTI to deal with. Mike reminded me I’m needed for other things as well. All my usual bloggy friends have been faithfully sweet. People I’d argued with came out to thank me for arguing with them. Others treated our disagreements as the irrelevancies they are. People who have been reading me but not commenting delurked; people who have never read my words before empathized with a single post. And the admiral won’t let me forget I’m part of the crew, as though I’d want to.

In addition to all the wonderful people, there is also the opportunity that’s been provided to me to turn this mess into something worthwhile, something educational. I haven’t only been writing about this because it’s been difficult to write about anything else. I’ve also been doing it to provide a counter to some of the anti-vaccination hysteria going around.

The vaccine = autism crowd have some heartbreaking stories in their arsenal. While I sympathize with the stories–Autism Spectrum Disorders are not strangers to my family or friends–I also understand that they’re wrong in where they place the blame. I’ve been working for a while to counter these stories with the stories of what happens without vaccination. The big difference right now is that the story is mine.

The other difference is the help I’ve had spreading the story. Greg, as usual, has been amplifying my voice, keeping people up to date on my spotty posting schedule and saying exactly what I needed to hear. PalMD spread the word and added information on the medical aspects, both at Scienceblogs and on Daily Kos. Abbie gave me and others reason to hope that widespread adoption of the vaccines could effectively eradicate the most common cancer-producing strains of the virus. PZ Myers reminded his hordes that there are effective actions to be taken.

And on top of all that, the internet has been a great source of information. Getting good information has required that I be careful about my sources, but it’s been worth it. I was able to go into appointments with a sense of the range of things my doctors might tell me, which helped me remember what I actually was told. I was able to understand the severity of what was going on. I was able to think ahead of time about the decisions I might be asked to make. From beginning (“What’s this CIN 2-3 my doctor’s talking about?”) to end (“Why isn’t Vicodin helping with this awful headache? Oh, it might be causing it.”), I’ve had a much better understanding of where I stood.

All in all, the internet really is a great place to be sick. I wouldn’t want to do it anywhere else.

This was clearly a case of getting to know someone and beginning to think “This is a person who could potentially be a friend. Too bad she lives in Saint Paul.”¹ And as time goes by, the relationship becomes more comfortable. Then one day, you find yourself in a social rather than professional setting, and everyone’s had a little wine, and it’s time to go home, and suddenly there’s a goodbye hug as though there’s always been a goodbye hug. And you had never really previously wondered about the hug–if there was going to be one, if there should be one, if there should not be one. One minute there has not been one, the next minute there is one, and it is perfect.

Other first hugs are attended by a considerable degree of angst, or at least consideration. For example, I think of and compare my first hug with the following people: my mother-in-law (she’s a kisser-hugger), my sister-in-law (after our first hug, she said to me “Wow, you are an outstanding hugger. I don’t just say that about everybody!” which added significant additional angst to the prospect of the second hug) and my father-in-law and brother-in-law (right, like that’s ever going to happen).

I have a friend whom I’ve known for years and had never hugged, and this was such a totally huggable person, but we had known each other for so long without the hug ever happening that things had become uncomfortable. Such a delay is not healthy. Eventually we fixed that and now the hug is part of our normal greeting (we don’t see each other too often). This is an example of some anxiety attending the lead-up to the hug, but then it turns out that everything is just fine. Better than fine in fact.

Then there’s the first hug that probably shouldn’t have ever happened. The one that does not go so well. Did you ever reach into something…a sack, a refrigerator, a small muddy pond…expecting to grasp one thing (a can of tuna fish, the ketchup, a small fish) and ending up with something entirely different (a dead mouse, a wad of rotten lettuce, a wormy parasitic larva of some sort)? The hug that should never have happened can be like that.

A hug is a moment of closeness, of friendship or love. The persons engaged in the hug are taking a moment to hold each other, to let the other person hold them. It is an intimate and very, very warm moment. The hug that should not have been is different. The being held part is a looseness, a sinking into the other person’s arms a bit. That is replaced with a stiffness and resistance, a sort of rigor (as in mortis). The hold action on the other person’s part is transformed from a friendly and meaningful embrace to a clumsy stiff-armed awkwardness. If you were the one not expecting, not wanting, even trying to avoid the hug, it can be like getting jumped on by a big dog that should be better behaved but is not. If your hugee is the one not expecting, not ready for, not wanting the hug then it is like grasping the wet lettuce or the dead mouse, or like popping a bit of warm, salty, tasty popcorn in your mouth and crunching down on an unpopped kernel. Not so tasty after all.

Twice in the last couple of months I’ve had someone…a potential co-hugger…just come out and ask me whether I’m a hugger. That’s funny because I actually think of myself as a person who enjoys intimacy as part of friendship, and I am definitely a hugger. But this made me realize that I am actually somewhat choosy (and there is not a conflict between these two things). In fact, to one of these people, I said “No, not really, nope, that’s not really me,” and to the other person I said, “Of course I am. I’m a total hugger.”

Not surprisingly, hugging is a gendered activity. I have numerous female co-huggers and only a few male co-huggers. I probably have more male co-huggers than the average straight male (even after subtracting non-straight male co-huggers), but not many. There are two reasons that men don’t hug each other as often as women hug each other or as often as women and men hug, and they are both spelled with a “y.”

I have to tell you about one co-hugger of mine. This is a person I’ve only seen once in the last 20 years, but back in the day we were very close friends. I swear that if we were of opposite genders, we’d probably have gotten married. I’ll call my friend “K.” When we hugged, K–about half my body mass and skinny as rails–would take the wind out of me, literally. The first time that happened I actually let out an involuntary noise. After that I learned to expect the reverse Heimlich maneuver every time.

Hugging is political. Democrats hug each other way more often than Republicans. (Other than Michele Bachmann, who not merely hugs but…no, let’s not even talk about that, okay?) You could see this during the meet and greet following the the President’s addresses to the joint session of Congress. It used to be that hugging was ethnically determined as well. I grew up in an ethnically heterogeneous world in which hugging or non-hugging was one of the traits that distinguished different groups of people. But this effect has, I think, transformed over time as hugging has become a more standard part of our commonly held popular culture. There are age effects. Awkward teenagers may forgo hugging for a few years. Elder women are constantly hugging everybody. And so on. And all of these generalizations are only vague determinants of what actually happens, of course.

In fact, you never know when somebody is going to come at you with their arms spreading outwards and their chin tilting to one side to avoid crunching faces. And when they get their arms around you, you never know how long it is supposed to last. Or where exactly you are supposed to put your arms and hands. It can be hell.

My sister-in-law is right that I’m a good hugger. I have a secret. I do what K taught me, but much milder. The person has to know you are hugging them, and the hug should last a little longer than the usual perfunctory “hug” we see so often these days. And if you are short, I might kiss you on top of the head.

My brother-in-law and father-in-law are very tall. Lucky me.

1. This is always an issue in the Twin Cities. Mixed friendships are difficult. Someday, maybe, people from Saint Paul and Minneapolis can just learn to live together. But for now, well, lets just leave it as…things can be difficult.