Life is pretty awesome, the world is pretty awesome, and the universe is pretty awesome… don’t believe me? Ok. Count your fingers and your toes, now feel the bones, the ligaments in them, think about the little nerve endings that connect to your spinal cord into you brain… that’s awesome. Google “How Lungs Work” (do it, seriously it’s cool). Think about the fact that this little marble that we are sitting on is in just the right place between space and our sun to be able to support life without frying or freezing it non stop… that’s pretty awesome. Tonight when you go outside look up at the sky (fingers crossed that it’s a clear night and you will be able to get a glimpse at the stars). Now think about the stars, that the light from many of those stars are older than our solar system… and that many of those lights are from stars that are gone, and probably have been gone longer than our planet existed. That is pretty damn awesome isn’t it! Life is awesome… till you get the flu.
When you get the flu everything sucks! The world is too hot, too cold, too noisy and too quiet all at once. You get really messed up dreams and begin to seriously consider buying stock in ginger ale.. You don’t eat for days on end and wake up three days later wondering why the heck you could eat a whole cow all of a sudden. Then there is the coughing, the blowing the nose, the aches and pains racking the body and the water bill that will inevitably sky rockets from the thee baths a day you are taking. Then your husband gets sick too….
Now there is two of you laying in bed, alternating between too hot, too cold, too noisy and too quiet… and never at the same time. You begin to kick yourself for still not ordering stock in ginger ale. You begin to think that together you are single handedly causing the deforestation of the world from the amount of times you blow your nose. You have an argument over who is using too much of the precious cough syrup because neither of you want to drive the 20 minutes into town to hit up the pharmacy for more. The argument ends with both of you gasping together, clinging to the edge of the bed for dear life because sitting upright for that long is making you dizzy. You throw the covers off because it feel like you are sunbathing on Venus and he wildly scrambles to grab the covers because he is having a starbath on Pluto. The cats find you boring and cause one hell of a ruckus because you keep sleeping through their supper… until you look at he food dish and realize the little buggers have tricked you into feeding them three times that night.
The dogs keep trying to get you to play and then look at you all perplexed when you walk into a wall while trying to find the door (of the house you have lived in for three years). You forget to feed them but that’s ok because the half eaten package of crackers on your dresser is delicious and they found the trash bag you left in the sink (because you put it down and forgot it existed until a border collie brings some egg shells to bed to munch on). They are also ecstatic because you are at home, in bed, rubbing their bellies on a THURSDAY (it might as well be Christmas for them).
You alternate between getting up in the morning thinking “Ok, I can do this, I can get to work” to falling back into the bed thinking “dear Gods they are going to find me in this bed half dressed with my shirt on backwards and a floor I haven’t vacuumed all week!!!” You start writing your will and then decide to stop when you realize that you are leaving your complete works of William Shakespeare to the dog and are leaving the dog to Good Queen Bess. You cough so hard that you throw your neck out (OMGs am I really getting that old?!?). Then you sleep some more and wake up realizing that you actually can see straight and are able to walk in a straight line (“GODS BE PRAISED I’M GOING TO LIVE!!!!”)
After coming through to the other side and living through the 2 week flu I thought I would share my words of wisdom with the rest of the world (or the handful of lovely people who stop by for a read). First of all I strongly recommend before you even get sick have a supply on hand of cold tabs, ginger ale, chicken soup and crackers handy. Seriously, because having to go shopping when you are sick not only will spread your nastiness with the world, but also royally sucks. That and fantasizing about stuffing coupons up some random strangers nose while in the checkout line might be seen as somewhat dysfunctional. Also look up stocks in ginger ale just before cold and flu season…
Accept the way you and your spouse is while you are sick. My husband is not a people person when he is sick. He wants nothing more than to be left alone to sleep it off in peace. No matter how much I want to fuss over him and take care of him I can’t (it only makes him want to drown me in soup). I have to respect his needs for his own healing. I, on the other hand, am the biggest baby you will ever meet. I am very pathetic and want my soup, a hot bath, ginger ale, blanky and a back rub all at once. I also tend to ask a lot if I can die now and look/sound generally pathetic. When both of you are sick, be patient with each other as you each work your way to health.
Set alarms in your phone. No really, do it, especially f you have pets. I had to set alarms for feeding time for the cats otherwise I would wake up to them yowling like they were being eaten by a coyote, which does not improve one’s mood. In their defense they are both rescues and it took a lot of work for them not to be so panicky around when they would be fed. Also make sure to feed the dog when you feed the cat, garbage breath is not cool. And for goodness sake let them cuddle and love you. They are not stupid and know that you are not feeling well. They cannot make you better so they will do the only thing they can think of and smother you with their love.
Be careful what you watch and listen to. While I was sick I watched “The Hunt for Red October” on Netflix (good movie). I then watched “the Rock” based on the Netflix suggestion (not a bad movie). After that movie I was sleepy so I pressed play on my CD player, took some night time cold tabs and listened to the CD as I drifted to sleep… which turned out to be a mistake. The CD was a guided meditation CD for Chakra Cleansing (which I thought might help me kick the flu sooner). So for the next ten hours I dreamt of being on a submarine (and sometimes building a submarine), while looking for rockets that were loaded with Chakra orbs… by the end of the night I was really sick of god damned submarines!!! After that I stuck to kids movies (The Shrek series in particular. Oh and go watch the fourth Shrek movie, I loved it!)
And finally don’t overdo it. After four or five days I felt pretty good. I had some energy, could stop coughing for a few hours at a time and could breathe! The sun was shinning here in central Alberta and the snow on my deck was soft enough that I could actually shovel it all off. So taking advantage of the day I cleaned up the doggie deposits from the yard and shovelled the deck. While the deck looked great… I was exhausted and woke up feeling worse. I also tried to go back to work too soon; ever sorted through what you did at work while you were sick and wondered “Now why the hell did I do that”. Yeah, that was me reviewing my work during the first week of coming back from being sick. And sadly I have sick time banked, like over 300 hours of sick time. If you have the sick time, use it and stay sane! That week was the worst and probably delayed my recovery.
So take my advice, get your rest, take good care of yourself (consider seeing a doctor if symptoms persist) and in no time you will be back to looking up at the stars, while drinking your hot chocolate and feeling your lungs fill with air going “life is pretty awesome!”
When you get the flu everything sucks! The world is too hot, too cold, too noisy and too quiet all at once. You get really messed up dreams and begin to seriously consider buying stock in ginger ale.. You don’t eat for days on end and wake up three days later wondering why the heck you could eat a whole cow all of a sudden. Then there is the coughing, the blowing the nose, the aches and pains racking the body and the water bill that will inevitably sky rockets from the thee baths a day you are taking. Then your husband gets sick too….
Now there is two of you laying in bed, alternating between too hot, too cold, too noisy and too quiet… and never at the same time. You begin to kick yourself for still not ordering stock in ginger ale. You begin to think that together you are single handedly causing the deforestation of the world from the amount of times you blow your nose. You have an argument over who is using too much of the precious cough syrup because neither of you want to drive the 20 minutes into town to hit up the pharmacy for more. The argument ends with both of you gasping together, clinging to the edge of the bed for dear life because sitting upright for that long is making you dizzy. You throw the covers off because it feel like you are sunbathing on Venus and he wildly scrambles to grab the covers because he is having a starbath on Pluto. The cats find you boring and cause one hell of a ruckus because you keep sleeping through their supper… until you look at he food dish and realize the little buggers have tricked you into feeding them three times that night.
The dogs keep trying to get you to play and then look at you all perplexed when you walk into a wall while trying to find the door (of the house you have lived in for three years). You forget to feed them but that’s ok because the half eaten package of crackers on your dresser is delicious and they found the trash bag you left in the sink (because you put it down and forgot it existed until a border collie brings some egg shells to bed to munch on). They are also ecstatic because you are at home, in bed, rubbing their bellies on a THURSDAY (it might as well be Christmas for them).
You alternate between getting up in the morning thinking “Ok, I can do this, I can get to work” to falling back into the bed thinking “dear Gods they are going to find me in this bed half dressed with my shirt on backwards and a floor I haven’t vacuumed all week!!!” You start writing your will and then decide to stop when you realize that you are leaving your complete works of William Shakespeare to the dog and are leaving the dog to Good Queen Bess. You cough so hard that you throw your neck out (OMGs am I really getting that old?!?). Then you sleep some more and wake up realizing that you actually can see straight and are able to walk in a straight line (“GODS BE PRAISED I’M GOING TO LIVE!!!!”)
After coming through to the other side and living through the 2 week flu I thought I would share my words of wisdom with the rest of the world (or the handful of lovely people who stop by for a read). First of all I strongly recommend before you even get sick have a supply on hand of cold tabs, ginger ale, chicken soup and crackers handy. Seriously, because having to go shopping when you are sick not only will spread your nastiness with the world, but also royally sucks. That and fantasizing about stuffing coupons up some random strangers nose while in the checkout line might be seen as somewhat dysfunctional. Also look up stocks in ginger ale just before cold and flu season…
Accept the way you and your spouse is while you are sick. My husband is not a people person when he is sick. He wants nothing more than to be left alone to sleep it off in peace. No matter how much I want to fuss over him and take care of him I can’t (it only makes him want to drown me in soup). I have to respect his needs for his own healing. I, on the other hand, am the biggest baby you will ever meet. I am very pathetic and want my soup, a hot bath, ginger ale, blanky and a back rub all at once. I also tend to ask a lot if I can die now and look/sound generally pathetic. When both of you are sick, be patient with each other as you each work your way to health.
Set alarms in your phone. No really, do it, especially f you have pets. I had to set alarms for feeding time for the cats otherwise I would wake up to them yowling like they were being eaten by a coyote, which does not improve one’s mood. In their defense they are both rescues and it took a lot of work for them not to be so panicky around when they would be fed. Also make sure to feed the dog when you feed the cat, garbage breath is not cool. And for goodness sake let them cuddle and love you. They are not stupid and know that you are not feeling well. They cannot make you better so they will do the only thing they can think of and smother you with their love.
Be careful what you watch and listen to. While I was sick I watched “The Hunt for Red October” on Netflix (good movie). I then watched “the Rock” based on the Netflix suggestion (not a bad movie). After that movie I was sleepy so I pressed play on my CD player, took some night time cold tabs and listened to the CD as I drifted to sleep… which turned out to be a mistake. The CD was a guided meditation CD for Chakra Cleansing (which I thought might help me kick the flu sooner). So for the next ten hours I dreamt of being on a submarine (and sometimes building a submarine), while looking for rockets that were loaded with Chakra orbs… by the end of the night I was really sick of god damned submarines!!! After that I stuck to kids movies (The Shrek series in particular. Oh and go watch the fourth Shrek movie, I loved it!)
And finally don’t overdo it. After four or five days I felt pretty good. I had some energy, could stop coughing for a few hours at a time and could breathe! The sun was shinning here in central Alberta and the snow on my deck was soft enough that I could actually shovel it all off. So taking advantage of the day I cleaned up the doggie deposits from the yard and shovelled the deck. While the deck looked great… I was exhausted and woke up feeling worse. I also tried to go back to work too soon; ever sorted through what you did at work while you were sick and wondered “Now why the hell did I do that”. Yeah, that was me reviewing my work during the first week of coming back from being sick. And sadly I have sick time banked, like over 300 hours of sick time. If you have the sick time, use it and stay sane! That week was the worst and probably delayed my recovery.
So take my advice, get your rest, take good care of yourself (consider seeing a doctor if symptoms persist) and in no time you will be back to looking up at the stars, while drinking your hot chocolate and feeling your lungs fill with air going “life is pretty awesome!”
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