2009 May 19 – Mama Melissa

I’m sick.

I’m not sure exactly when I started feeling so crummy but at some point during this past week it must have snuck in on me while I was caring for my children who were fighting off their own illness. The thing that’s so profound about parenting is how readily we are willing to put taking care of ourselves on the back burner while we do the things neessary to care for our children. This is not one of those cheery, sarcastic, humourous, typical Mama Melissa type posts but rather its a poor Mama post! That’s right, for once I’m going to lay on the floor sniffling and whimpering about my own misfortune because that’s just how I’ve been feeling lately and quite frankly, I could use a little sympathy.

If I really think about it I would say that my cold and flu like syptoms appeared two weeks ago but then things started to get better so I brushed my own health and well being aside when Jacob started getting feverish. I trudged along and somehow made it through the week but by Friday night I was starting to realize that I wasn’t feeling so hot myself – I spent most of friday night awake coughing and most of saturday with a headache, cough and congestion. By midnight on Saturday I knew something was not right….I felt completely different from any other typical cold I’ve ever experienced – I was pretty much awake the whole night with a fever and chills…coughing my guts out and feeling exhausted. When I finally pryed myself from the bed on Sunday morning, I decided not to go to Church with the family and stayed home with Jacob while Mike took Violet…..at this point I was having excruciating pain in my chest and ribs when I inhaled, coughed or sneezed and I could barely make it up two stairs without feeling like I was suffocating – I sent Mike a text message telling him that I felt we needed to go to see a doctor when Church was over.

I’m not a doctor person. I get all sorts of anxiety when I go to see doctors that are not my own family physician but I knew that it was needed and my doctor is not available on the weekends. We got to the Urgent Care center and with my dry cough and fever I immediately got dropped into the “possible swine flu” category and was quickly put in an isolation room complete with my own pretty yellow mask – turns out (as I tried to tell them at urgent care) that I didn’t have swine flu but x-rays did reveal that I have pneumonia in both lungs….crap. I left the Urgent Care center with strict orders from the doctor to rest, take my antibiotics and some pain killers and use an inhaler when breathing gets tough….no longer then an hour after we arrived, we were back on our way home…..

I’m having a pity party tonight though….

Much as I needed it, and much as I wanted…..rest did not come today…the pain is just too much.

Maybe tomorrow?