The funny things I do when I'm ill
I need to lie down...
The weekend started with a cold. No one in my family has one, so who knows where I got it?
But it forced me to slow down to an absolute standstill. I didn't have the energy to do anything.
It felt like someone had removed my batteries because I couldn't get going; I felt that done in.
The strange thing is that being ill brought out some quirky behaviours in me, and I am not sure why this time I noticed more than I did say than when I had COVID-19 for the second time in July.
It's the weirdest thing. Everything seems magnified and hallucinatory.
My husband came into the bedroom as I was dozing, and he looked so big that I thought he was a bear with a big smiling face.
I don't understand why it is when you have a heavy cold that you hallucinate - so weird.
Sleeping becomes so disrupted you fall asleep and then wake up every twenty minutes thinking you've slept longer. Watching the clock does help you fall asleep, but it is short-lived.
Thermometer checking becomes a saga because I feel so ill I figured it must be the flu, but to my utter disappointment, it barely registers.
No fever is always a good sign, right? But then, why do I feel so ill?
Surely, I must be close to death.
Unable to concentrate on TV or read, I decided to catch up with friends by sending them messages. But the typos and half-concocted messages that make sense when you're coherent are impossible to read, let alone understand.
Hi, ho y ebing, what ve yo ve doing weekner. I am cold.
None of this makes sense to me, let alone the friend who got this message.
Usually, when I am ill, I go off food entirely, or I might get some weird food cravings. This happened when I had COVID the first time.
I do have a penchant for ginger. I think it is because ginger has a healing anti-sickness effect, and I especially love the Grasmere gingerbread, which you can buy only from Grasmere in Cumbria.
The problem is Grasmere is two hundred and fifty-plus miles away.
Despite my death-like illness, I made a chocolate cake for Sunday dinner. This random yet sudden burst of energy only made me feel worse, but I figured if I kept going, I would feel better rather than collapsing on the sofa.
We probably get colds on average two to four times a year, yet despite significant gains in medical science, there is still no cure for the common cold.
How can something so innocuous make you feel so ill that you are left feeling like the only way you are leaving your bed is feet first in a coffin and out the door?
It floors you for days, leaving you fatigued, hallucinatory, wretched and wholly wrecked.
You feel horrible, and all you want to do is skip work, lie down with your duvet and blankets, and retreat to your favourite sofa or bedroom, a box of tissues in one hand and the remote in the other.
The worst of all is the mood swings similar to menopause; these are downright mental. I cry at the slightest thing, from a photo of a memory to starving donkeys in a TV advert.
I know my whole being is compromised, and I cannot process the smallest things. I don't know what is happening or understand English; even the tiny tasks are mountainous.
Then there's the issue of work, which is even more challenging when it's your business and the problem of completing tasks when all you want to do is sleep and be left alone.
There is no one to rely on, so it's a case of fitting it in between the doses of paracetamol that make me feel marginally human. At least I can work in my pyjamas without losing my self-respect.
But the strangest feeling is guilt, as if the world will notice if you don't show up for a few days.
Never mind, onto the next paracetamol.
I'm sick. Looks like I'll be sleeping and laying in bed all day. Oh wait, I'm a Mum. ~ Unknown
