On the Mend

Picking Up the Pieces of a Normal Life

I’m on the mend. This means there are some days when everything appears normal and I’m back to my “normal” activities. Then, there are others, like this morning, when I feel I have fallen back into the land of sickness with a stopped-up nose and headache.

However, I intend to keep pushing through and forcing myself to begin to pick up the pieces of my life as I knew them in the time before I was sick.

What was I sick with? A f*cking cold. But it was the kind of cold where I haven’t felt as bad since I had mononucleosis as a teenager. I pretty much lost three weeks of my life. Granted, I am retired and able to take the time to be sick, which is a luxury. Had I still been working, I would have hauled my ass off to work to do a mediocre job in the days while I recovered. But those days, thankfully, are gone, and I could take my time getting better.

The doctor called what we got RSV. It’s called Respiratory Syncytial Virus, and it’s contagious as anything. You are contagious two days before symptoms show up and for the next week. My husband brought it home from work. Another person there fell sick the same day as he did. He lost a week of work while I took care of him. In my house, that is called SPT or Sick Person’s Treatment. Then, a week into his illness, I fell ill.

It hit me like a freight train. We tested my husband for Covid on the first day or so, and it came back negative. He treated it like a regular cold, though I hadn’t seen him this sick in years. He sounded like a pack of barking dogs when he coughed. A week into this thing, he broke out in a red rash, and that’s when I bullied him into calling his doctor. That’s the day we found out it was called RSV. There is no shot for it. It’s just something you catch, endure and heal from. The doctor said it is all over the place right now.

I remember one 24 hours when I didn’t get out of bed. I forgot to take my normal medicines for a couple of those days. As you get older, you get to take stuff for hypertension, cholesterol, and in my case, diabetes. My blood glucose numbers went through the roof, which is also to be expected when a diabetic gets sick. A friend brought over chicken soup, crackers, tea, and lemon/lime water for us which was a lovely kindness and a tremendous help. The fact that we are older didn’t help. He’s 74, and I’m 67 years old.

Anyway, it’s nice to write a bitty piece about what’s going on in my life right now.

A writer’s funny that happened just now? Do you know how people feel they can talk to you when you are writing? My husband has come into the study with these bits of news as I write this story. The one that got my attention was his announcement that he will be doing Fartleks tonight at the gym. I had to ask him to repeat himself. Yes, that’s what it’s called. Translated, it means speed work or the Swedish method. You run fast interspersed with running slower. Speed work. We lived in Norway as a child, and I can remember our delight when we got to go around saying, “Fart, fart, fart” without anybody reprimanding us. “Fast, fast, fast!”

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