Where Logic Meets Love

10 Reasons Being Sick Sucks (As If You Didn't Already Know)

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

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10 Reasons Being Sick Sucks (As If You Didn't Already Know) | Faith Permeating Life
I haven't fallen off the face of the earth, I've just been sick since Friday.

Usually when I get sick, I stay in bed for a day or two and then I'm all better. This, however, has been one of those nasty shifting sicknesses where one day it's a sore throat, the next day the sore throat is gone but you have no voice and a slight fever, then the fever goes up and suddenly you're so stuffy you can't breathe out your nose. This also means that rather than just warning my bosses and co-workers that I'd be out for most of the week, I keep e-mailing and saying I'll probably be back tomorrow. I finally gave up and decided to work from home tomorrow because the work e-mails piling up are driving me nuts and most of what I have to do can be done remotely anyway. And I can only watch so many TV shows and play so many games of Set on my iPad before I start to lose my mind.

So, for your enjoyment(?), and to exercise my brain power, here are the top 10 things that suck about being sick:

10. Screwing up my sleep cycle
When I wake up and realize I'm not going into work, all I want to do is sleep forever. But eventually, around noon, I move the 20 or so feet from the bed to the recliner in hopes of draining out the crap in my head and so I can see Mike before he leaves for work. (He's been working evening shifts lately.) This means that I can't get myself to bed at a normal time because I've only been up for 9 or 10 hours, and so I end up falling asleep closer to midnight. It's gonna be hell when I actually go back to work and have to get out of bed at 6:30 in the morning.

9. Not eating enough
I rarely feeling like eating when I'm sick. And nothing sounds good unless it's warm and soft or liquid. I didn't take my vitamins for three days and finally made myself take them today. This means that even though I know I need nutrition to get better, I'm providing my body with not much more to work with than a cup of chicken soup and a bowl of mac & cheese.

8. Not knowing when it will end
Nothing I do seems to be helping much. I've had a low-grade fever for a couple days, which I take as a sign my body's working on getting better, but it doesn't seem to be making any large strides towards wellness.

7. Dealing with symptoms that make other symptoms worse
Like coughing fits when you have a sore throat. Drinking tea all day for the sore throat and then for the cold, which makes it hard to cool off from the fever. And of course, blowing your nose until your skin hurts.

6. Actually starting to miss work
It's not that I don't love my job, but no one minds a break from work every once in a while. It can make you feel dispensable after a while, though, knowing that everyone's going on without you. On the other hand, if you start getting e-mails from your boss like, "I tried to fix this survey, and I just made it worse, can you do it?" you can start feeling like things are going to fall apart if you don't get back to work soon.

5. Feeling not bad enough for a doctor, not good enough for anything
As far as I can tell, I just have some version of the garden-variety cold that's going around, and there's nothing particularly concerning that makes me feel the need to go to the doctor. Yet I feel (and look) crappy enough not to go back to the office. So I'm stuck in this limbo where I feel like I'll be lying on my couch drinking water and taking OTC meds forever until my body finally gets its ass in gear and fixes itself. Because of my weird reverse hypochondria, this leads to me feeling guilty about missing work when I haven't seen a doctor.

4. Feeling needy
As I found out when I had mono, Mike and I have different approaches to dealing with sickness. He mostly likes to take some meds and then be left alone to watch TV. I prefer to be actively taken care of, probably because that's how my mom took care of us growing up, constantly thinking of and offering things we might need to be more comfortable. Mike is good about getting things for me if I ask him to, but somewhere between him not offering everything I want and me not wanting to ask for everything, I end up feeling needy and completely incapable of caring for myself. I also get cranky because it will take me 15 minutes after draining my water glass to admit to myself that 1) I'm too tired to get myself more water and 2) I have to ask Mike to get me some more, and so if he takes another 5 minutes to get around to it after I ask him, I end up getting irritated. Which isn't really his fault.

3. Being lonely
Worse than playing the asking/offering game is when he has to go to work and then I'm all by myself, feeling like crap with no one to talk to. And then I really do have to get things for myself or go without (see #9).

2. Having a foggy head
The one good thing about mono was that the only symptom, for most of the time I had it, was pure exhaustion. Which was pretty terrible in itself, but as least I had my wits about me and so had no problem working from home or holding a normal conversation, except when I was falling asleep. With my head all stuffy, my brain doesn't work properly and I forget what I'm doing or saying. Even writing this post has been a beast, and not just because I have to stop every other sentence to blow my nose. Being physically out of it is one thing, but not having all my mental capacity is really a blow.

1. Generally feeling like crap
Even with all of the above, nothing is as bad as the overall feeling of gross and snot. I really hope I get better soon.

Anyone want to share their top 10 tips for getting better? :)


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