I got sick last week. Right before Thanksgiving. It was a pretty awful cold with a whole lot of fatigue and muscle aches and just nastiness that I am not used to (thank God). And I'm lucky, I'm in a situation where nothing, other than keeping my children alive, is required of me, and honestly at 7 and 10 they could survive a few days on their own - probably do them some good.
Anyway, I was powering through, cleaning the house, taking supplements, prepping food, netty potting, naps, you name it. I finally was able to eat a little bit so I could take some DayQuil.
And that's when I got mad.
(You are now entering a slightly illogical rant - enter at your own risk)
Dayquil. All cold medicines really, they're just tools to keep you a productive member of capitalism. They dull your symptoms, make you human enough to interact and go through the motions of muscle memory so you don't have to waste a vacation day or to get behind on your to-do list or in some way just make you more stressed out in your life - as if that's even possible.
But while you're hopped up on the 'Quil, you're still not 100%, you are hiding behind a haze. A fog made up lack of sleep and orange dye that makes it impossible to quite comprehend what people are telling you and not quite remember how you drove yourself home.
Of course when we're feeling lousy we want something to make us feel better. We don't want to feel the anguish of sniffling, sneezing, coughing, aching, stuffy head, and fever so we can't sleep. And we don't want to get behind on work. We don't to miss opportunities that we had planned. We don't want to get off track with all that we wrote out in our planner.
It would be great if we could just pause time when we're sick. Take a time out. Everything gets to stay exactly how it is and we get the time we need to get better. We get to take something that helps us not feel like roadkill, but also we don't feel forced to push ourselves.
I don't know about you, but since COVID there was a little bit of a pause on how hard we push ourselves, and we made taking care of ourselves a priority, but then the world, especially for women and mothers, just doubled down and sped up on us again. Now, I get the feeling, that as long as we don't have COVID, then we have no excuse to take the time off to rest and recover.
So what would the perfect medicine and treatment plan be for the sick and tired mom?
- Dinners made in the fridge for 3-5 days that the kids will eat
- Automatic Laundry and delivery of new comfy jammies to be sick in
- An everlasting box of the really good lotiony tissues that don't tear up your nose
- Every Sandra Bullock movie free and streamable
- An always hot and full mug of Starbucks Medicine Ball Tea
- A room and blanket that adjusts the temperature based on your body temp
- A referee that can handle the kids fighting when you are sleeping
- All the pharmaceuticals that help manage aches, pains, fevers, chills, that do make you feel less miserable without the brain fog
- An assistant that comes and helps manage the menial tasks and puts out any fires so you can rest worry free
- That same assistant that doesn't need any direction or a list, they just know exactly what would be most helpful, they don't even tell you when they're coming or going
So yeah, most of that is pretty unrealistic. That's why getting sick is so hard and emotionally exhausting to recover because it literally requires 2-4 people to do the work of one of you, yet everyone makes you feel completely unnecessary once you're on the mend.
The tug of war between controlling and managing everything and then being completely unnecessary or wanted because people can just eat pizza every night or every meeting turned into an email.
Sometimes I feel like if I'm not making the list of things that I need to do then there might not actually be a need for me, more than to be a meal and grocery delivery system. I mean sure, my family likes me, but they really love to tell me how much fun they have without me as well.
I guess the reason this whole post is a rant is because I don't have some awesome way to wrap this up in an empowering bow.
Getting sick sucks, and it's hard. We gotta embrace the suck, embrace the hard. Be thankful we can get through most viruses these days unscathed, especially after the past few years. Like every day with it's own set of challenges and sucky circumstances we have to get through it finding the most ease that we can. So at the end of the day we can collapse and say I did the best I could for my body today. I mean that's the goal everyday, isn't it?
