During my “sick week” last week, I sort of lost track of time. There were moments I would fall asleep and wake up not knowing if it was the next day, the next hour or next minute. More often then not instead of feeling refreshed from sleeping I felt worse. You know how it is when you’re sick…you get that film on your mouth, your hair feels greasy, your skin hurts…your eyelashes hurt! I hurt all over anyway because of the sores flopping out all over the place. I remember one time specifically when the kids had left for school and I must have fallen asleep but when i woke up I was so startled that I really wondered what had happened to everyone and where everyone had gone. It took me a bit to get my barrings and remember that I was just a sicko, laying like a frump in a bed feeling horrible.
I tried to shower every day in hopes that it would make me feel better…or give me the “appearance” of feeling better. During my showers I often spent that time talking to god. I ask God a lot of questions…most of which to this point have gone unanswered. I asked important stuff like “why, if I have to live with lupus, couldn’t you have at least given me the looks of Jennifer anniston or Kate Winslet?” (come on that’s an important question!) I have asked “what will happen to my family if one of these days I don’t get over one of these flares?” “How is my husband going to cope when i can’t help him at all anymore? And how am I going to help with the guilt associated with that problem?”
I always stand there, in the shower, waiting to hear that voice, in the water or bouncing off the wall, or whispering in my ear, giving me the answers to all my questions. But I still haven’t gotten any answers. And each day that I have been sick it has gotten harder. And everyday the urge to just chuck it all and run away has grown stronger. It’s been almost a week and a half since I got sick and, yes I feel better, quite a bit better, but I am definatly not 100% yet. I get tired so easily. My energy level is very low. I have been trying, this week, to be more up beat, using that old thought that being positive, dressing positive, and smiling, having a spring in my step may actually help me accomplish that. And in some ways that’s true. But in some ways its a false facade that just makes my family think that I am doing better than I am…my kids expect me to be back to normal…I’m not sorry! My husband is hoping, fingers crossed that I am back to normal…I’m not.
then yesterday my son comes home from school with a 103 degree fever! Just what I need. My mom instinct kicked in. I took his temp, tucked him into bed, gave him some medicine. Later last evening he came out and sat on the couch next to me and laid his head on my shoulder. Both my husband and my daughter were like “what are you doing? Are you trying to kill yourself? You are just getting over something. He shouldn’t be sitting by you.” And I am thinking…”he is my son. I would die for him. I would be doing this same thing for either one of you. And I would hope you would do the same for me…but maybe you wouldn’t…hmmm.” So, now I have a sick kid, a messy house to clean ( no, no one keeps up when mom is sick, even if you do have lupus, which probably holds true for cancer or any other disease of the kind), I have kids texting me by noon to find out what we will be having for dinner…..COME ON PEOPLE!
It amazes me how fast they go from “you cannot go back to work for at least 2 weeks ” to “what’s for dinner tonight mom? Oh and can you call the ortho? and I need this and I need that and can you take me here to get this?” So, I asked god “Are children and husbands a cruel joke that you play on women to make us look crazy?” No answer to that question either! Go figure!
I truly believe the only way I will get some real peace and quiet, some recuperation and solitude would be to go away for a few days by myself…alone! The problem with that is in the coming home. I have a feeling the work to clean up when I get home would undo any relaxing I did while I was away….am I right ladies???
But, for right now, it is quiet here. I am going to take advantage of it and lay my head down for a bit. Maybe if I listen closely enough I will get one or two answers to the many questions that keep swirling around in my head!
God must think I’m crazy!
