Family · Health

Plans Cancelled…

When your plans are pushed off a cliff…

After a week of being ill, I’m back up and moving. It was the strangest illness or illnesses smushed together I’ve had. No fever at all, the entire time. It started with a sore throat and headache, then add congestion and a nose faucet with the previously mentioned symptoms, then add on exhaustion. That was the first three days. Day four I had my energy back and considered myself good to go other than the persistent headache. Day five, the headache continued and I was easily tired. Day six, I felt like I’d been hit by a bus. I hid in my basement away from the world, in the dark and cool. Day seven, BAM – stomach flu. Like vicious, this must be what it feels like to have your guts ripped out. Thank you to my leftover pregnancy Zofran for the eventual respite. Day eight, after the final round of death at 2am, I started slowly trying to replenish fluids. Headache gone!

It was like a bad cold mixed finished off with the stomach flu. Who does that happen to? What kind of evil concoction is that pairing?

So, in the interest of public health I cancelled pretty much everything I had planned, distanced myself as much as I could from my children, and then worked in solitary confinement on the “cold” days. Obviously on the stomach flu days, I was completely isolated and then had a Lysol barrier sprayed around the rooms I ran between.

These are obviously first world issues, but this killed my 5K a week streak. I wasn’t able to help with my 1st graders at youth group. I did a no-contact pick up from my daughter’s dance class. My house looks like an explosion of all the different crafts, socks, shoes, clean laundry, dirty laundry, dishes… Grrrr…..

Thankful that all of my family is healthy and was healthy prior to my illness. No symptoms of any sort. All happy (except the 10yr old battling 6 digit by 2 digit long division).

I guess this was my little rant. I take all the suggested precautions. Where did this last week come from?! I don’t post this for sympathy. Rather, I am trying to process losing multiple days to inactivity. I’m not good at self-care, not even when I’m obviously sick.

I hope you stay healthy readers. May this week meet you with positivity, perspective, and blessings!

Family · Health · Perspective

I’m Back with Christmas Music

I’m Back!

Sitting at my desk at work, listening to “Silver and Gold” on pandora radio. I dabbled in Christmas music last week, but my office mates weren’t keen on it. They are Thanksgiving purists.

It was a h-e- double hockey sticks of a fall. I was sick for half of October and all of November. One IV dose and three oral antibiotics later and I’m feeling like a functional adult again! Meanwhile, I still have two kids, a job, and volunteer responsibilities. As is typical for me, I overdid life and my body rebelled. Memory and thoughts got fuzzy, hand and face were numb, you know all those weird MS things. My NP just hugged me while I cried at my last visit.

Time to look at life priorities again. Illness makes it obvious that something has to change. After five days of difficult conversations with my husband, we are back on the same page. No plan, but at least we are talking in the same direction about the load on my plate.

I’m not one to dwell on negative things. On to looking forward to Christmas! On Thanksgiving Day, since we previously celebrated with both sides of the family, the kids and I put up Christmas decorations. They ate nachos and wore Santa hats. It was glorious! We battled our unlit, pre-lit but not working artificial tree and then the 90% working set of white Christmas lights. I let my daughter put up the Nativity, but then reorganized it. She refused to place any people or animals off the creche. That was one crowded party!

Today after school, we begin work on the church Christmas program. Thank goodness this one calls for a whole jumble of angels. All the little girls want to be angels! Last year we had to pull out fairy wings from the dress-up box at the house to equip everybody.

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Winter is (mostly) here! Although it is sunny and 48 degrees F now, this is what it looked like last week. I enjoy a good white winter!

Happy December 3rd!

Much love — Jen