There is nothing like a good bout with the flu to put you in your place. This week, influenza came full force through our house, knocking our door off its hinges and giving almost everyone in our house a good licking.
I got it the worst.
It started the first night with what appeared to be strep throat. I Googled the symptoms of my self-diagnosed illness and checked off all relevant bullet points. Sore throat? Check. Fever? Check. Headache? Check. It was nine o’clock on a Saturday night. The best thing I could do was go to bed.
I called it an early night and let my husband take over baby duties. When I woke in the middle of the night, I had passed strep throat and was convinced I was entering my final hours on earth. My entire body ached. My throat was still in pain, but it was the least of it.
“I’ll get the kids ready and we can drive you to the urgent care center,” my husband pleaded with me the next morning.
I hurt too bad to get out of bed, much less go to the urgent care center. The last thing I could stomach was sitting around a room full of people sick like me — all waiting to get called back by a nurse and receive their prescription for an antibiotic.
“Just let me lay here in misery,” I cried, doing my best to channel Barbara Hershey as she lay dying in the movie “Beaches.”
“Stop being so melodramatic,” said my husband.
I looked at him with my bottom lip out and my eyes drooping. “Will you get me some more Sprite?” I beg.
Sprite is the only thing I can stomach. Surely this flu will be good for at least a 5 pound weight loss, I think. If I can lose weight, than not all is lost.
The second day I didn’t get up once. When my husband comes to check on me I cry.
“I don’t think I’ll ever be well again,” I tell him.
“You’ll get better,” he says as he picks up the pillows I’ve thrown to the floor around our bed.
The second night is the worst for my husband. Our 2-month-old misses me and doesn’t go to sleep well without mommy holding him. He ends up crying into the wee hours of the morning keeping my husband up past 2 a.m. on a Sunday night. My husband decides to go in late the next day since he was up all night with the babe.
He ends up working from home the entire day as I am still incapacitated. I miss my 5:30 a.m. work-out sessions. I miss my column deadline. I miss numerous work tasks that I had put off until Monday to finish. I miss holding my baby.
I lay on my couch unable to sleep another hour, since that’s all I’ve done for the past two days. My daughter wants to lie next to me and I have to tell her to sit at the end of the couch. “Mommy’s sick, sweetie pie and I may make you sick.”
She pouts and goes back to playing Barbies.
I think about rethinking my decision not to go to the urgent care center. I might as well be Val Kilmer in “Tombstone” suffering through tuberculosis. I’ve been quarantined in my own home. When I finally get the energy to stand up, the first thing I do is laundry. I wash every bed sheet, quilt, and blanket I’ve taken solace under during this unforgiving ailment. I let them soak in hot water and send them through the wash cycle twice.
There’s a lesson in everything I tell myself as I take the blankets out of the washer and feed them to the dryer.
What’s my lesson?
I’ve dropped the ball repeatedly the past three days. The flu had hit me in the head and knocked me across the back of my knees. It was like a hitman for the mob, making sure nothing I was supposed to do got done. And that was the lesson I decided upon. Sometimes, not everything gets done and that’s OK.
Amy Gesenhues is a freelance writer who lives in Floyd County. You can read her daily commentaries at www.AmyWroteIt.Wordpress.comE-mail her directly at amy@amywroteit.com
Columns
Related Photos
Discussion
GESENHUES: A lesson from the flu
- Columns
-
-
CLERE: Walkout is absurd
The walkout by Indiana House Democrats entered its third week yesterday as tensions continued to rise and misinformation proliferated.
-
LADD: New Albany has new energy
New Albany is evolving. Public art has become more prevalent in the downtown, drawing more locals and outside visitors to our community; bringing more publicity.
-
BEAM: Dealing with disaster
Yet the survivors of Daisy Hill have also witnessed deceit. They say greedy people not affected by the storms have claimed gift cards and even cars meant for those in need with bogus addresses and other lies.
-
CUMMINS: Are machines becoming more humane?
I can see it now. Load gobs of financial data into the massive bi-partisan federal computer, powerful enough to digest the national debt. Whatever it spits out, Congress could not filibuster, nor could the president veto it.
-
HAYDEN: More thoughts on the ‘no’ votes
Many said they didn’t vote in the primary because they didn’t want the tag that would come with it: In having to ask for either a Democratic or Republican ballot — as required in primary voting — they feared or loathed the idea of being seen as loyal to a party.
-
DODD: An unexpected Angel
-
STAWAR: The souvenir state of America
Recently, my wife Diane and I spent the day aboard the Belle of Cincinnati with our daughter’s family. We all had a good time, even though the diesel-powered Cincinnati attraction isn’t a real steamboat, like our own Belle of Louisville, and despite the fact that it poured down rain the whole time.
-
NASH: Making a Memorial vacation
Memorial Day weekend is upon us which brings us to the start of the summer travel season. With the mild winter we had around here most schools didn’t have much in terms of snow make-up days so many kids have already finished up their semesters and are ready to get on with their holiday. Not to worry parents it will only be a couple of weeks before the back-to-school sales kick in and in no time at all it will be time for those youngsters to go back.
-
HARBESON: A handy little idea
After having worked hard the past few months, I now have something new to add to my resume — “I was Lead Project Manager for a major construction venture, supervising every aspect in the creation of a privately funded community building.”
-
MORRIS: Nancy Hogan was more than just an employee
Pulling into The Tribune parking lot each morning was pretty uneventful in the old days. Nothing good happens between 5:30 and 6 a.m. Nothing at all.
- More Columns Headlines
-
Man Falls Off Crane, Dies After Police Standoff
Raw Video: Cop Shoots Man Eating Another's Face
Russia Condemns Ally Syria Over Massacre of 108
Raw Video: Earthquake Shakes Evacuees in Italy
Dairy Farm Uses Chiropractor to Help Cows
Unexpected Smog in Pristine National Parks
Air Canada Plane Makes Emergency Landing
New Ticks Spread Across Southeast, Diseases Rise
Bring Your Own Tech Programs Charge Up Students
Pope's Butler Vows to Help Vatican Investigation
Mother of Allegedly Abused Girl Denies Claims
Raw Video: 19 Dead in Qatar Shopping Mall Fire
Service Dogs Help Wash. Soldiers Battling PTSD
Raw Video: Heckler Bursts in on Blair Testimony
Japan Farmers Plant, Seek Radiation-free Rice
Vatican in Chaos After Butler Arrested for Leaks
