Sick & Tired

I'm grumpy these days. I'm not really sure why. Everything is going well. I guess it started two weeks ago when I got the flu... AGAIN. I'm not sure if I have the worst immune system in the world, or if I simply put my hands in all of the wrong places.

I'm sure it doesn't help that I have two small kids. But there has to be a line somewhere, a point where you stop being ill and start feeling like a normal human being. For the first part of the week, I walked around in a long-sleeved fleece and sweatpants, despite it was 85 degrees out. My fever got up to 102.7 and it really sucked.

After five days of that, I figured things would turn around. But oh no. Then I got asthmatic bronchitis -- bad enough to the point I ended up in the ER sucking air out of some machine. I even got to sit in the special chamber where they keep TB suspects... just in case. So it wasn't TB, but it was bronchitis. After my trip to the ER, I had a diagnosis, not that it did me any good.

By Friday, I was in to see a pulmonary specialist. He put me on antibiotics, steroids, a nose spray and two inhalers. Finally, I was getting somewhere. Little by little, I'm starting to feel good again, but it's left me in a generally pissed off mood. Two weeks is a long time to be sick, especially when you're working and taking care of the kids. I still feel run down overall and my lack of energy hasn’t helped.

Being ill has given me a chance to reflect and to remember what it felt like to be sick with someone who doesn't give a flying shit. While he would call to check on how the kids were doing, he never offered to pick up the slack. It was as if this whole sick thing was just a figment of my imagination, which was no different when we were married.

Mr. Ex, meanwhile, not only played nurse to me every night, he took me to the ER and sat there in the containment chambers while they made sure I didn't have an infectious disease. When I had a fever, he brought me Gatorade and woke me up every four to six hours to try and get my temperature down with some Tylenol. He rubbed my back and told me how sorry he was that I felt so sick. He went and got my medicine from the pharmacy at almost midnight.