Forever malwary

Yesterday, someone hacked my computer. Every time I tried to log into Blogger, I was instead prompted to sign into one of my Gmail accounts. It even happened when I clicked on the "B" from another person's blog. It doesn't appear that they got any sensitive information or caused any damage, but it did hijack my day and left me feeling violated.

But that's not what this blog is about.

It occurred to me that my illnesses have been a lot like that. Out of nowhere, I developed dermatomyositis. As the prednisone was arresting the DM muscle damage, the immunosuppression I developed from the prednisone caused me come to down with listeriosis and Legionnaires' disease. The Legionnaires' disease triggered a severe case of sepsis, which dropped my blood pressure drop so low that I experienced a series of strokes on both sides of my brain, and I fell into a six-week coma.

Okay, so that's a lot more convoluted, not to mention more serious, than what happened yesterday. After all, I'm still recovering from the strokes and coma; all I'm doing about the hacking incident today is running an extra anti-virus scan.

What they have in common is that something completely out of my control took over my life. Furthermore, cancer is a bit like malware. A malicious bit of code, genetic in this case, takes over your cells. As far as I know, I don't have cancer, but the increased risk of malignancy that comes with DM means I have to be ever-vigilant. Though the malware scan we ran yesterday seemed to have fixed my computer's infection, there's no guarantee that any cancer I might develop would be so amenable to cure.

The bottom line is that any time, something can come along and take control of your life. Of course, that hacker's aim wasn't to prevent me from writing this blog. The DM, Legionnaires' disease, strokes, and coma, weren't part of a plot to make my life miserable or kill me. When you're an atheist, you accept that bad things happen, and it has nothing to do with you. You just deal with it, run the scan or do the exercises, anything thing you can do move on with your life.

The plugged in know if they want to stay online, they have to accept the risk of hackers. All humans recognize that in life, they face constant dangers. Atheists believe that nothing can protect them from those hazards. Those that are all of the above do their best to be prepared.