Thankful Thursday - Sickness

You may have noticed in my last post that yes, again, I have a cold.

Yes, I am one of the most sickly persons EVER.

But I can tell exactly when I'm GOING to get sick, soooo.... it's never a surprise. Well, I guess there's the odd time I'm all, wait, what? But usually, there's a I'm-going-to-be-sick formula:

lack of sleep + close vicinity to a sick person = one out-of-commissioned me

If I meet up with a sick person and I'm NOT run-down tired from not sleeping, I won't get sick. If I'm run-down tired and manage to not run into any sick people, I won't get sick. 

I went to the doctor about it once - WHY the heck am I SICK all the time? But there's nothing weird about me, I just come up against something I haven't the immunity for for whatever reason - exhaustion, ex-mono-patient, or because it's H1N1 or something intense - and then I'm downed. 

LATELY, I've really NOT been sick much.  I mean, I was sick for about three days last month, and then, obviously, this month have been felled (I babysat a little girl with the vestiges of a cold last week because Little Miss was in need of a playmate and the little girl's mother was in need of a serious break due to a little brother not sleeping through the previous night - follow it up with a sleep-lacking night for me and here I am). BUT in previous months I've NOT GOTTEN SICK.  Which...was weird.  There were a couple of times, even, when both Mr. Man and Little Miss were sick and I nursed them back to health without getting ill myself.... I know. FREAKY. 

Anyway, so I'm a sick person. Whatever. I'm over it. 

WHAT does this have to do with Thankful Thursday? Well, I hope more than last week's ode-to-V tangent! 

Thankful Thursday

the illness edition

yes, that's right.

1) TISSUES

(from: http://scottdesignworks.com/portfolio_toro.html which is NEAT! Take two seconds and read about this guy's 'tissue ring' - I'd buy that!)

Okay, so. I'm sick. And, as goes with being sick, full of.....gunk.  Which is pretty gross. 

Imagine life BEFORE tissues? I mean, how many times is too many to REALLY blow your nose in a handkerchief? Catching the odd dribble or whatever in it and shoving it back in your pocket, fine. But ohmigosh, if I had to do that repeatedly with my I'm-sick-and-in-the-process-of-EMPTYING nose-blows? shudder And then HAND-WASH it on a washboard? All the dried crusties? Ew, no THANK-you! I'd probably go through hankies like they were disposables....

THANKS FOR TISSUES!

2) SICK DAYS

(from: http://health.slides.kaboose.com/133-top-ten-sick-day-movies-for-grown-ups)

Okay, so I'm a stay-at-home Mom at the moment, so I don't have a boss to call in to or a desk full of paperwork that I'm leaving undone (actually.....) BUT occasionally, I get to take a sick day anyway.  Sometimes Mr. Man is home (i.e. a weekend) and sometimes I'll send Little Miss to the (uber-fantastical, can't-live-without-her) neighbour for the day.  Which is brilliant, because, even though I'm SICK, which isn't ideal, I have the ENTIRE DAY to do ANYTHING I WANT.

Of course, being sick, the only thing I want to do is nothing. But honestly, who doesn't NEED a day of nothing every now and then?? When I'm sick I hunker down in bed or on the couch with a giant drink, a remote, a box of tissue, a phone (so I don't have to get up to see it's a telemarketer I don't want to talk to), a book (sometimes I'm so sick I'm not up to reading - ever had that? Oy)...... you get everything you might possibly need within arms' reach of you, dive under a snuggly blanket, and spend your ENTIRE DAY there. 

Because is there really a better remedy for anything other than rest?

Sick days I get to watch favourite movies, movies I've been wanting to watch but haven't had a chance before. Or this week, I organized my many many partially-started/finished scrapbooks and worked in Studio J to fill in the blanks (did 10 two-page layouts of Little Miss' un-scrapped baby pictures the other day. FROM MY COUCH while watching episode after episode of Angel on Netflix).  Sometimes I read books when I'm sick...you may recall I love to read.  I nap on sick days.  

Sick days rock my socks. 

You know, except the being sick part. 

Thanks for sick days, Mr. Man & awesome neighbour! And whoever else has ever given me a day off to just be sick. 

3) MEDDLESOME GET-BETTER SUGGESTIONS

(from: http://www.passionatehomemaking.com/2008/02/natural-cold-remedies-for-children.html)

Soooooo you MAY remember that I don't ALWAYS feel grateful for this... AND, depending on how close we are and how out-of-it-ill you were the day you gave me a suggestion on how to get better, you may have EXPERIENCED the the non-grateful side of me - SORRY!

My body does NOT respond to home remedies for the common cold.  Not herbs, spices, blends, vapours, whatever.  Generally a cold takes about 14 days to fully come and go, aaaaaand it will take my body 14 days with or without all the poking, prodding, and trying. So that's fine.

But you know what? As much as it drives me absolutely bonkers and I, in my sick-not-thinking-straight-gross-induced haze of thought can sometimes be OFFENDED by the obvious assumption that I'm a moron....

...I'm GRATEFUL.

No, really!

I mean, to be THAT annoyed by near CONSTANT suggestion of oh-do-this-oh-try-that-oh-this-gag-inducing-crazy-upside-down-dangling-witch-voodoo-remedy-WORKS...

...I MUST be surrounded by people who love me and care about me and want me to get better quickly. 

And THAT is not an annoying thought. It's ridiculously humbling, really.  Securing, really. With the bombardment of unsolicited advice that comes my way when I'm ill it seems highly unlikely that I'll be able to fly under the radar if anything really serious ever came my way.  Did you ever see that video of a guy in NYC saving a woman from a mugging and being stabbed in the process, and then he was just left there to bleed out and die? People walked by, some even stopped and looked at him, but no one helped HIM. No one who passed him stopped long enough to assess that hey, this dude is DYING.  (Not going to go looking for it to post because it SUCKS)

I hope it's obvious that I'm not naive enough to think that something horrific could happen to me at any moment of any day.  But being barraged by well wishes and well-meaning advisers sure makes me confident that there is a MASS of people who WOULD stop for me. And that in itself is comforting.

Though I don't think it will speed up my cold... ;)

4) DRUGS

(from: http://www.marksdailyapple.com/cold-and-cough-medicine-dangerous-for-children/)

So, this is along the vein of the tissue thinking. Even though I RARELY use them there are times when I really need to be functional even though I'm sick, and I pop an Advil cold & sinus or a Tylenol flu to get me through.  They usually clear me up just enough to do what I gotta' do without passing out aaaaaand then I can go back to wallowing in my sickness.

And really, as often-sick as I get, I hardly ever ever use these.  USUALLY don't feel it necessary.

But man oh man.... ever read your history books about way-back-in-the-days-of-only-hankies when one nasty cold was the end of a person?  A cold just escalated and escalated until it became life-threatening pneumonia or something? And how many people DIED from that??

Thank GOODNESS for medicine.

5) HEALTH

(from: http://www.cartoonstock.com/directory/c/chronic_disease.asp)

YES, health. Yes, I am one of the sickest people you know. I know I know.

But it's JUST A COLD!

I DO NOT currently have really anything 'wrong' with me.  You know?  I don't have any compromising condition that I have to monitor or deal with day in and day out - unless you count marriage? BOOM! JUST KIDDING, Mr. Man! LOVE you! O:-) - I don't have to stick myself with needles or test my blood or have specific, restrictive diet requirements like my diabetic, factor-5 lyden (spelling? Anyone?), GD, or another-thing-I-can't-remember friends do.  I'm not confined to a wheelchair or scooter like my friend CP from class, or that little boy with MD is going to deteriorate to.  My coughing fits are either tied to my head colds or the fact that I sometimes scarf up my food too fast and choke on it, unlike that new little baby with CF is going to experience in her life as her parents are taught how to POUND on her back to loosen the mucous in her chest so she can breathe again.  I'm not even asthmatic like the neighbour-boy for whom common colds quickly become bronchitis and who has to have puffers to open a constricting airway.  I haven't been hospitalized for gallstones like two girlfriends of mine.  I'm not currently battling crippling mental illness like depression (been there, done that. Won that fight...for now, anyway), anxiety, ADHD, or the unbelievably horrific schizophrenia (ohmigoodness, have some time? Read this - Jani's Journey - ShopGirl shared it about a week ago aaaaaand it's unbelievable).

I'm not I'm not I'm not I'm not.  Sure, I have a cold and I get sick sometimes.  But I'm healthy.

And what a blessing.