Staying at home because I am sick is no fun.
Illness is doubly cruel. For the past three days, I’ve felt weak physically, I’m uncomfortable, my body shakes violently every 30 seconds because I cough, my nose leaks, my throat feels like its closing up with thick gooey, sour, sharp tasting crap, my head sometimes hurts, and my eyes seem extra sensitive to the light. So, I do things like keep the shades closed, refrain from playing music, keep the the volume low on the computer and the TV, walk slowly, and I tend to stockpile everything I need to stay in one room. The physical effects of a cold make me want to stay as still as possible without threat of boredom — which is a challenge in itself. Reading a good book is about the only thing I can do without too much light, noise, or movement. But it can’t be a funny book, because that would make me laugh, laughing would make me cough, coughing would shake me, and shaking me reminds me of all those body aches.
Being sick is a double whammy, so the second ‘wham’ is the mental effect of a cold. When I wake up after a full night of uninterrupted sleep, and I still feel like my body has been drained of all locomotive power, that hurts the psyche. When I’m sick, I forget what it feels like not to be sick. All I can think about is how weak I feel, how the fast-moving, loud-noise world that we live in is not very accommodating to people who have a cold. When I’m sick, I feel like I’m never going to get well, even when experience tells me that whatever bug I have should pass in a few days. Intellectually, I know I’ll be well again. But, it’s hard, if not impossible, to feel the truth of it. With the blinds closed, the lights dimmed, and the house so still, the world closes in on me. Unless I go outside to check the mail or do some other simple chore, I can even forget that there is a world outside of the dungeon I’ve created for myself. The very atmosphere that my physical body wants/needs, my mind can’t stand. Competing physical and mental needs is just torture.
