Earlier this year I had a mini-stroke that put me in the hospital for three days. Last night I drove home through thunderstorms to find my computer hard drive had been fried to a nice toasty brown. Overall, I'd say the mini-stroke was more fun. At least then I got morphine.

If you've never lost a hard drive, the comparison isn't as odd as you might think. You're caught by surprise, shocked at the suddenness and unfairness of it. The feeling of loss, of frustration, of not being able to do everything you once took for granted; all that crashes down on you and you're left with a pounding headache and an unanswered plea to the deity of your choice.

Although in my experience, with a computer crash you tend to kick things more.

Last night I was too stunned to react. Flipped the switch a few times, listened to my hard drive go click, click, click, and gave up. Wandered listlessly around the house. Considered going my traditional computer repair route but couldn't find the hammer. Spent some time cursing creatively. Sacked out and watched six hours of network television, which is never a good thing to do if you're already depressed and looking for something to make you feel better about life. My wife tried to cheer me up but quit when I kept trying to move her around the room to get a stronger network signal.

What makes the feeling worse is the knowledge that it was preventable, the nagging suspicion that you asked for this, you idiot. You know all the stuff you're supposed to do so this doesn't happen. You should have eaten better, you should have exercised more, you should have protected your surges, you should have performed regular backups. And I work with computers for a living, which just grinds in that extra little salt-in-the-wounds annoyance. It's like being a nutritionist with scurvy.

And it's just sitting there. You know, deep in your heart, that if you manage to turn the computer on in just the right way it'll work. It usually takes 30 or 40 tries and a few more kicks to get past that stage.

I've got my software, and a lot of the things I do is online somewhere so getting all that back is no problem. I even backed some stuff up sometimes, which will be a big help if I can remember where the discs are. But the last few years of e-mail, my contact lists, my working files . . . without warning I lost a lot of my memory, leaving me grasping, confused, and in need of meds.

(I also lost my drafts for today's column, so you narrowly missed hearing my dazzling pearls of wisdom on such heady topics as CBS printing its advertising on eggs and Don Knotts' widow objecting to a proposed statue of her husband as Barney Fife. Even disasters have their upsides.)

Today the long, painful, expensive road to recovery begins. I'll start assessing my system, trying to see what still works and what doesn't. I'll seek professional help, which has its own horrors. I won't have to deal with medication, or physical therapists bending my untoned self back and forth, but I will have to suffer the PC guy who tries to retrieve my hard drive data snickering at my musical tastes and loudly asking why my collection of educational films all have "Brandi" in the filename.

I'll also have to open my computer box and move things about, which never goes well for me. You know that car commercial where it drives by and other cars crumble and fade into dust as it passes? I have that effect on computer innards. The merest glance can melt circuit boards and short wires. Easy, illustrated installations with only two instructions (1. Plug this in. 2. Smile proudly.) invariably require three frustrated tech support calls and one shameful retail exchange of the still faintly smoking component.

On the plus side, I now have a reason why I haven't responded to any of the e-mail that has been piling up in my inbox since my last system crash in 2002. And I can take the plunge and buy a whole new system, an option I was regrettably not given after my mini-stroke (probably not in my HMO).

Soon, probably by this weekend, I will have figured out what's broke. With the help of friends and extremely patient salespeople I will have fixed this computer and/or assembled a new one. I will have gone through the mind-crushingly tedious period of reloading my software, options, and preferences. I will have learned to move on despite my debilitating episode and the resulting limitations. And I will strive to calmly accept my losses, no longer frantically trying to pry open my old hard drive with a screwdriver to scoop the old files out.

I probably won't back up anything, though. I'll be too busy researching the Don Knotts statue.