The Lost Week

It’s been a tough past couple of weeks for me. I don’t get sick very often, but man oh man, when I do, I do it up right. It started a few days before Thanksgiving, but my kids were both home, my folks were coming down for Thanksgiving dinner, so I guess I just willed the worst of it away for as long as I could.

The following Saturday it all started to fall apart and here I am a week and a day later, still not out of the woods. I’m still weak, can’t talk, and just feel generally not quite together. This past week was especially hard on me, as my husband was working out of town for the biggest part of it, which meant I was basically alone.

I was single/divorced for about thirteen years, so it’s not like I didn’t experience being sick and alone at some point and time. But when you’re young, you don’t tend to think about just how sick you are in conjunction with how alone you are, how unsupervised you are, or the lack of the presence of a necessary adult should you need help. You’re invincible, and no matter how weak, unsteady, or unstable you feel, every recovery is just around the corner.

Let me tell you, age and those same circumstances make a world of difference. There were several days this week I basically have no memory of, whether it was from all the combined medications or just the sickness itself taking hold. I wasn’t eating, (so you all know I was near death) which was doing nothing but making me weaker, and I can faintly remember on one of the worst days, wondering how long it had been since I showered and washed my hair.

I finally decided it had been too long, and as bad as I felt, and probably looked, there was no way if I needed one, that I would have called an ambulance to myself.  You should see this nappy, curly hair after three days of wallowing it in a pillow; it’s a sight to behold let me tell you. So I showered, and about half-way through I started to feel weird and lightheaded. I was mid-shampoo so I knew I had to finish and I still had to condition my hair or I would look like Ronald McDonald. All I could do in that last five (or fifty it seemed) minutes or so was to pray that I wouldn’t faint or fall, so that the first person to find me would be my nearly twenty year old son. Sweet heavens above, that would scar him for life, and I do want him to get married someday. If he were to think that’s how it all turns out, well, I’m just not sure there’s enough therapy in the world.

A special thanks to God for my wonderful parents who checked on me daily with offers to come and help as well. Their words were like a warm blanket around my heart, and a comfort that’s undeniable; I am blessed.