True Confessions Time
For the record? I am a terrible Sick Person.
There are some people out there who can handle being sick with grace and aplomb. They just... I don't know. Sleep through it, or curl into a ball and withdraw from the world and watch TV until it's all over, or take their medicine and patiently rest while catching up on books they've been meaning to read. I can't do that.
I whimper like a sad puppy. I take my temperature about half a dozen times a day (a holdover from when I was a kid and you were only *really* sick if you had a fever) in an attempt to prove to myself that I have a right to feel miserable. I can't keep track of what meds I've taken when, and wind up skipping doses in order to avoid accidentally doubling up, and then whine about feeling lousy.
I get caught in a three-way war between lethargy, guilt over not being more productive, and extraordinary boredom at spending more than an hour at a time sitting still. I'm too hot and too cold, so I make blanket nests and then fretfully kick my way out of them. I keep an almost gleeful log of every symptom, out of the same warped need to prove that I really am sick and not just being a whiny baby or something.
And then I decide way too soon that I'm better, and try to go running or dancing or work a 12-hour shift, and end up paradoxically arguing that I'm FINE DAMNIT as I cough until I black out. And the whole cycle starts again.
So. My apologies to anyone who has to deal with me when I'm like this, because I have yet to master the art of illness-with-panache.....
There are some people out there who can handle being sick with grace and aplomb. They just... I don't know. Sleep through it, or curl into a ball and withdraw from the world and watch TV until it's all over, or take their medicine and patiently rest while catching up on books they've been meaning to read. I can't do that.
I whimper like a sad puppy. I take my temperature about half a dozen times a day (a holdover from when I was a kid and you were only *really* sick if you had a fever) in an attempt to prove to myself that I have a right to feel miserable. I can't keep track of what meds I've taken when, and wind up skipping doses in order to avoid accidentally doubling up, and then whine about feeling lousy.
I get caught in a three-way war between lethargy, guilt over not being more productive, and extraordinary boredom at spending more than an hour at a time sitting still. I'm too hot and too cold, so I make blanket nests and then fretfully kick my way out of them. I keep an almost gleeful log of every symptom, out of the same warped need to prove that I really am sick and not just being a whiny baby or something.
And then I decide way too soon that I'm better, and try to go running or dancing or work a 12-hour shift, and end up paradoxically arguing that I'm FINE DAMNIT as I cough until I black out. And the whole cycle starts again.
So. My apologies to anyone who has to deal with me when I'm like this, because I have yet to master the art of illness-with-panache.....