Things not to do when you're sick

Things not to do when you're sick

• Go to the funeral
• Lick the thank you notes closed
• Go to the birthday party
• Go to the lecture

Saturday questions

• Who cuts themselves with eggshells? Under their fingernails? Seriously?!
• Why must foods high in iron taste uniformly gross? Perhaps because I taste it every day as it goes down the back of my throat when my nose tries to bleed but can't because of the swelling from the allergies and the deviated septum from the 6th time I broke my nose?
• Why does winning something feel so nice, even if it isn't something you really want or need? I'm sure the folks I share it with will appreciate my good fortune. : )
• Why do I still laugh so hard at good burping stories? Burping. Heh.

temptation to do

In light of the dizziness, swelling, poor wound healing, brain foginess, pain flare-up, thyroid struggling, cold-intolerance, anemia, and my inability to grasp anything (literally or figuratively), one could argue that I might be overdoing it and should use my day off to, oh, I don't know, rest and NOT try to DO ALL THE THINGS, since that do-things strategy seems to not be working for me very well. At least it will be raining. Lying on the couch watching the rain seems to be about my speed right now. Must resist temptation to do . . .

why I'm writing this July off as a loss

Two things I learned this July:

1. Classical music can be hazardous to your health.
2. Resting can be dangerous.

Taking a sick day

It feels like a waste for a weekend day, but I'm really feeling awful, so I am taking a sick day today.  Just as soon as I finish the laundry.  And the dishes.  And the bills. After that, I am going to lie on the couch, propped in a posturally correct position to do one thing: watch foreign DVDs with no English vocal track.  (When I do this, I can't multitask by doing other things while listening to the show.  I have to focus on this one thing.  [Whether I can or not is up for discovery.]) 

I will not

• obsess about how I should be  cleaning the floors or researching hot water heaters or using the voice recognition software to dictate quotes from books I've read to get those shelves cleaned off. 
• waste time looking around the internet for information about how to get rid of broken toasters and frying pans. 
• get bent out of shape that I can't write ALL THE THINGS. 
• take apart and put back together my tiny Christmas tree (in sad shape after two guests knocked it off its display shelf).
• read (my elbows, wrists, and hands,  are killing me), and I won't even take notes on what I'm watching. 
• berate myself for not sorting through files or any of the other cleaning tasks that remain from moving into this space all those months ago.
• think about how sleep deprived and tired I am and how much I dread going to work and having to interact with people when I feel this unwell (my patience and filters are just gone, and I say things sometimes that I just shouldn't).
• think about how helpless I feel in the face of this pain and inability to sleep.
• worry about how much more my back hurts or why it feels like I have bruises all over it.

I will

• work hard at not curling up into a miserable ball because that will make various things hurt more tomorrow.
• look out the window at the trees and the sunlight.
• remember to get up and drink water. 
• even eat something, if I am feeling less sick. ( I probably should; if this is an allergy/weather change nausea, then getting some food in my stomach to dilute all the snot draining into it is probably a good idea.) 
• rest as hard as I can. 
• hope that tomorrow will be better.

I trust the Chiropractor

Why does it hurt more

to be straightened than crooked

like the winter trees?

"Mitochondrial Fatigue"

This diagnosis makes me
want to read not Google
or WebMD but A Wind
in the Door by L'Engle
because the mitochondrial
problems there were solved
by singing if I remember
true and I want this all to
be healed by singing too.

What I wanted to do that day

What I want to do is huddle on the couch watching the wind whip through the cottonwoods listening to the sound of the leaves and the rain drizzling down, just existing, not trying to distract myself from the pain or discomfort or the fever, not trying to accomplish anything, letting my thoughts drift instead of constantly yanking them back on course of necessity.  I want to watch the clouds move past in ragged layers in the sky and see if the sun will ever come out today.

What's scary

You know what's scary?  WebMD is scary.  I go there when I get some weird symptom, hoping it will tell me, "Eh, that's just life," not, "You may have toxic shock syndrome from strep after smashing your finger in the garage door." 

Seriously?!

I do not have time for a life-threatening infection.  Can a month go by where I don't have some new, weird medical problem?  At least a month?  Please . . .

The joys of Facebook, part XXXII

What do you do when a high school sports coach who made your life miserable wants to be your friend on Facebook?  How surreal.

I was never openly hostile (unlike her), but I wonder what makes her think I would want to reestablish contact?  I mean, this is the woman who yelled at me when I would have asthma attacks from pushing myself too hard in practice.  "When you wheeze like that, it brings down the team!" she would tell me.  Of course, when I would stop before having an asthma attack, she would glare at me and say, "When people don't give their best, it brings down the team."  I really couldn't win.

My senior year was hilariously awful.  I was at a conference for a week over the summer, and they put me out in a non air conditioned dorm (even though I had requested one with AC because of my asthma and allergies).  I didn't want to make a fuss (that's the mantra that always leads to my downfall).  It devastated my health.

During volleyball season, I was so ridiculously ill it wasn't funny.  Bronchitis, pneumonia, ear infections, etc., all at the same time.  But when I started that season, I was the best hitter on the team.  Before I even started getting really sick, that coach stuck me as an off-side hitter.  Our setter couldn't backset to save her life, so I basically never got to hit.  I still served 98%, though, even when I was sick.

And that's . . . pretty much the only good memory from my senior year of volleyball.  My stats were good despite all her efforts and my illness.  She didn't even try to promote me in the district honors, so I only got honorable mention and didn't even get to play in the senior all star game.  (Not that I could have, by that time.  I couldn't breathe just sitting down, and I ended up on all kinds of fun asthma meds, including prednisone, which made me bruise all over my body and bleed from my ears and generally have reactions that made the doctor go, "Hm.  Stop taking that.  Now.")  She's one of those people in authority that just seemed to hate the kind of person I was, and there was nothing I could do about it but take her abuse and mistreatment and go on with my life.

So why wouldn't I want to be "friends" on Facebook?

To be fair, I probably would have passed out if it was the high school Varsity basketball coach who wanted to friend me on Facebook.  He was even worse.  Ever since I won that basketball for having the best free-throw percentage during camp when he bought it specifically for his daughter, he was really an excessive jerk.  (And that's on top of the wretched things he did to my older sister.  What did we ever do to tick this man off so badly?  Nothing, as far as we can tell.)

Lest you think I just never got along with coaches, I generally did.  Just not those two.  :)

Still sick

Being sick is unpleasant.  I always forget how awful my stomach feels when I get some sort of virus that involves a lot of coughing.  I'm sure it's a great workout for my abs, which is good because I don't foresee a lot of other exercise in my future, at least not until I can stop coughing every five seconds and breathing like Darth Vader . . .

I've always wondered at the contradiction: carbonated beverages are supposed to settle your stomach when you're ill.  Why is that?