TheBanyanTree: On being sick

[Monique Young]

I have been sick for 7 weeks, 3 days, 10 hours, and 47 minutes.

Excuse me. 48 minutes. 

And I'm none too pleased about it. It's not that I'm seriously sick, and
it's not that I'm not going to recover, because I am, and it's not that my
life totally sucks, but I am very sick of being sick. Each time I fall
asleep I think to myself, "Self, this is it. I have had it, and I am going
to wake up miraculously recovered." It shouldn't be a miracle though. These
things should just run their course and be gone. 

Then I wake up again and I'm not better and then I get mad. And I develop a
new plan to attack this illness. I won't go into the details of how I'm
combating it, or what has been done, and what will be done in the future,
because no matter what I say, someone has a better idea, and I have been
berated on more than one occasion for all of the following: 1) using Western
medicine, 2) not using Western medicine, 3) not calling someone's wife for
instructions on cleaning out my nasal passages, 4) not resting enough, 5)
resting too much, 6) not taking care of myself, 7) focusing only on myself,
8) using the improper OTC medications, 9) using any OTC medications, 10) not
using any OTC medications, 11) using the wrong herbs, 12) using no herbs,
13) using too many herbs. 

This is not a fight I can win, so whenever I receive advice on how to solve
this thing ("if you'd only do THIS ONE THING" people tell me, that will take
care of it, "A friend of a friend had the exact same thing and this is how
they solved it!") I listen attentively and I say I will take that into
consideration. I then either do or don't. I can't take all the advice I'm
given since I don't have multiple personalities, or multiple bodies (oh, how
great would that be! One of me could be sick while the other was well!), and
some of the advice givers barely know me. That being said, I'm certainly not
opposed to advice, and I do a great deal of what my friends tell me to do,
but there is a limit. I'm rather opposed to the idea of my head exploding as
I do participate in a variety of conflicting treatments. 

It's not as if I'm alone in this. Everywhere I turn, people are sick. There
is something going around, we say, though as far as I can recall, that sort
of thing is always being said, which leads me to believe there are always
things going around. Around and around and around. There are more of us than
ever before, and we are spreading germs, bacteria, microbes, viruses, bugs,
around and around. Sometimes they come and go quickly, mine usually do, and
sometimes not so much so. Is it worse this year? I don't know. When I'm in
the middle of it, of course it's worse. Once I'm better, I'll forget all
about it, my body memory being rather short sighted. Once it's gone, it's
gone, and once I'm recovered I'll forget all about it.

Unfortunately that time is not yet here, and mostly I'm just really annoyed.
This is not my idea of a good time. I've forgotten what my idea of a good
time is, so much time have I spent waiting to have one again, but I'm pretty
sure this isn't it. I do know that next month I'm scheduled to attend a
wedding, where I will no doubt be in charge of something important, like the
guest book or the gift table or something, and the month after that I will
be attending another wedding, but that will be my own, and then the month
after that I'll be attending another one where I won't, fortunately, have
any sort of part, though my then-husband will be a groomsman. He's always a
groomsman. He's been in so many weddings he's lost track of them all. I'm
thinking I should just buy him a tux and be done with it. As for me, I am
always a bride, never a bridesmaid. 

I do know that I have a list of projects I want to work on. I do know that
there are a thousand things awaiting my attention, things I want to do, and
that the sooner I can get started on them the happier I'll be. There are
also, sad to say, several things I'd rather not get started on, but life
can't be fun all the time, can it? Otherwise, if it were, how would we know
the times to be thankful for? We must have some variety so we can tell the
difference.

I'm ready for some variety, some change. I'm ready to wake up without
feeling the need to cough up a lung, to sleep all night long night after
night and not just now and then, to think about something other than how I
feel, physically, so I can ponder how I feel, emotionally. I'm ready to
rejoin the world of the living, to leave my self-imposed isolation, though
every time I attempt to do so I find myself backsliding, back down the
slippery slope to ill health. One day of going out to work, even for only
five hours, means two days to recover back to how well I was. Or maybe just
one day now. Maybe I'm improving so imperceptibly I can't even tell anymore.
I've lost all ability to see what's going on and to tell if I'm better or
worse. All I know anymore is: this isn't right, it isn't comfortable, and
like so many other people who find themselves felled with a bug or a virus
or a teeny tiny microbe of destruction, I'm ready to get back to my life.
Now. 

One of the biggest problems with being perpetually sick is that every time I
laugh, or someone makes me laugh, the coughing begins anew, and it's loud
and coarse and it goes on and on and I feel like I have to cough something
up, a lung or a spleen or some organ that I don't even know the name of, but
I can't, and only by staying calm and quiet can I get it to stop again and
fade away. And in this house, staying serious is not an easy task. Someone
is always saying something, or doing something, that causes me to crack up,
but perhaps the coughing is good for me, maybe I can cough the damn illness
out of me if I keep at it enough. I'll keep trying. 

I'm going to eat a bowl of clementines now. There is never enough too much
Vitamin C. Well, actually, there is, of course, but I'm not taking mega
doses of a supplement, I'm eating fruit. Big difference there.