“At least you have your health!” — often said when one is disparaging one’s fate, usually accompanied by the statement one should count one’s blessings.
My health took a brief holiday on Tuesday night, having (correctly) assessed everything else was going very well so it may as well take its turn. It started with the usual sore throat — and then, as my son puts it, you feel like you swallowed sand. Then you get the fever. And then a wet cough that punctuates every third word.
Three days later you’re still pretty much there. There was one brief respite where the fever had broken and I felt better, I now feel like that was likely the result of DayQuil and not actual healing. Now it appears the fever has broken (again) and I’m hopeful, as this time I can talk more before the racking cough, and the joint pain is subsiding.
One of the most frustrating things about being sick is that you take time off of work (if you can, and you should if you can) so you can heal up. As a result, you look at this startlingly clear calendar, this wide-open schedule, and fantasize about all the things you could do! You could — garden! You could sew, you could catch up on those books, you can reconfigure your pantry, you can …
…oh, no you can’t. Because you’re sick. So while your BRAIN is perfectly capable of envisaging these things, and of planning and plotting and wanting to go do them, your BODY is calling you four-letter words, aching at every joint, and requiring obscene amounts of sleep. In the space of 24 hours I used up an entire box of kleenex (plus five individual packs); in the space of the last 4 days I exhausted the remaining supply of tea and honey. I’ve lost four pounds (silver linings, anyone?) I am both BEHIND and AHEAD at work because I’ve done everything I can that didn’t require me to talk — because I couldn’t — but now I need to make up all that talking time with a voice that sounds like I’ve been sucking on helium and pickles.
This is okay thought. Because it appears I can once again count my health.
Bobbie Conti 