Before I was sick

Believe it or not, there was a time when I was not sick or at least recuperating from being sick and during that period I was writing articles left and right. It seemed as thought I had an opinion on everything (except health care, I still don’t understand either the liberal or the conservatives view). But as I sit here at one o’clock in the afternoon, in my pajamas (I did at least manage to get a shower) I realized that I have not written anything in a long time and at the very least writing will help pass the time.

I am very lucky, my illness was short-lived, totally curable, and it just has a long recuperating stage. It’s not like you get pneumonia, get out of the hospital, sit around for a week and everything is fine. No, you get out of the hospital and it is a week before you can take a shower without using oxygen, its two weeks before you can run something to the dumpster and not need oxygen and we wont even go into the whole diarrhea that comes with the antibiotics.

And again, I am lucky, as inconvenient as my pneumonia is and has been and will continue to be, it will pass. A year from now I doubt I will even remember I was sick and my illness will just manifest itself in a shortness of breath now and again. But right now I am fighting to not become my illness and to look at the bright side and see the glass half full etc, but what if I were suffering from something more severe and life threatening? Then what?

I will be the first to admit I am a whiner. I whine because I don’t feel good, I whine because I am bored, but what about people like Farah Fawcett and Patrick Swazyzee or my mother or a friend’s mother in law who faced cancer and fought until the end? My mother was diagnosed with cancer in 1974 and bravely fought it for ten years before succumbing to it in 1984. Unlike myself, who feels entitled to a sick day if the wind is blowing the wrong way my mother was a very brave woman who would get chemo treatment in the morning, go and work at her brothers carwash in the afternoon, then go home, get sick then make dinner.

I don’t know how people like my mother, Farah, Patrick Swayzee etc, do it. How do they not become their illness? I got brave today, I went out and got the mail. A simple walk down a few flights of stairs, a walk across the parking lot and I was on the couch for an hour taking a nap. Don’t get me wrong, I am not putting myself down. I am not a hypochondriac nor am I looking for attention (which is a good thing because stranded out here in Hooterville with three cats and a spouse that does not get home until 7 means there is not an abundance of attention to go around) I am just heeling at my own rate. I’d love nothing more than to speed the process up but pneumonia is just one of those things that takes a long time to recover from.

So I spend my days trying to push myself, but it is not easy. I am afraid to push myself, I am afraid that a trip to the mail box will result in a coughing jag, I am petrified to get behind the wheel of a car and right now I have NO business behind the wheel of a car, but I do know I need to push myself. Yesterday I had a full day with Ronca, today was a minor day just getting the mail who knows what tomorrow will bring.

I write this with no other intent then to pass the time and get myself back into the writing mode. Before I got sick I had an opinion on everything, now, well its just all about me and I want to get out of that mentality.
So there you have it, my thoughts today January 19, 2010. 28 days left till I go back to work