Falling apart

Today, I met a colleague in Cambridge whom I hadn't seen since March. I noticed that he was limping badly. On inquiry, it turned out that in that meantime, he has developed a collapsed left knee, an inguinal hernia and cataracts in both eyes.
"Good lord, man," I said, "if you were a horse we would shoot you."
Call me soft-hearted, but I think it is important at moments like this to comfort our friends in whatever ways are available to us.
He then said, without smiling: "Jake, I am falling apart."

Earlier, on the bus into Cambridge (yes, folks, I took the park-and-ride option: somebody's got to save the planet), I got into conversation with a lady of mature years. It transpired she was on her way to the hospital for chemotherapy for leukemia, that she had had rheumatoid arthritis for 25 years, had two artificial ankles and the only reason she did not have an artificial elbow was that the surgeon would not operate on her while she was undergoing chemo. I thought to myself, "Good lord, woman, if you were a horse we would shoot you." But of course I didn't say it, because she was not a friend and therefore not amenable to that kind of comforting observation.

I don't want to make a list of my medical problems, so let me just quote the poet:
If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever the place where, if I had been a horse, they would have shot me.

I'm always like this when I have a headache.

PS For those of you who like your poetry uncontaminated by old scrotes, here is the original (Rupert Brooke's "The Soldier")
If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England's, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.