Current Flu

Well, having told the story of the other 2 bouts with flu, here's the last "installment."

Marste arranged for us to go to Disney World the first week of January, 2010. She had this fantasy of having one last family vacation before one of her sisters "did something stupid, like get married" was her way of putting it. The one serious boyfriend DID NOT get invited! Ha!

Steve and I didn't know WHAT she was thinking. We had a much clearer view of the dynamics in family vacations, having been adults when we took our children to visit their far-flung relatives! Ha!

Marste, being a serious "Disneyphile," wanted to go to Disney World, which she'd been to, but none of the rest of us had ever seen. I laughed out loud. Steve teaches English at a community college, and he writes textbooks. He did this so I could homeschool our children, and we wouldn't go broke trying to live in So. California! It worked; he earned his income and my income, as well, and we're still here! I can't say we're "none the worse for wear," but we're here! Our bank account, however, doesn't give us carte blanche for five round-trip plane tickets, a week of hotel rooms, and a week of feeding us all--including the sweets that Steve and a couple of the kids seem to think goes with any "family outing"! So, Marste took charge of the arranging of things.

Marste had figured out that a "villa" with 2 bedrooms was cheaper than two hotel rooms, AND it had a furnished kitchen, with cupboards and everything! She figured we could eat at least some of our meals in the villa, thereby saving a LOT of money on food. I figured that having a kitchen meant that we'd have better food than inexpensive restaurant food, and getting through this week without completely messing up our systems was of interest to me! Ha! (We ended up eating breakfasts and most dinners there, and it worked great!)

So, we flew out there on a red-eye that got in Sunday morning, we rented a car, and we went to the hotel on the off-chance that we could at least leave our bags there and go to WalMart for groceries. Checking in, shopping, and filling the cupboards filled up the rest of the 40, or so, hours we'd all been awake by Sunday night, and we went to bed with visions of Sleeping Beauty's castle filling our heads. I guess.

Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday, we went to Disney World. We saw the "lands," we went on roller coasters--the only rides any of us were interested in!--and we ate very expensive lunches! By Wednesday, though--note the omission in my list of days! Ha!--we'd had it. We were all tired because of sleep deprivation and because of being on top of each other in this villa. We all needed a break from each other, and Wednesday was it.

Marste's rosy vision had paled in comparison with reality. I actually felt sorry for her! Ha!

Saturday, we all staggered home, slept some, and we got up Sunday to deal with kids needing to get to their own homes, Steve needing to prepare for work the following day, and my needing to get a handle on laundry and groceries, not to mention figuring out a schedule that included petting the dogs--I'd hired a live-in pet sitter, who was fabulous!!--and getting back to doing the homework for classes I'd been taking. Sunday night, all was back to "normal," more or less. My throat was scratchy and I was coughing occasionally, but my throat gets scratchy when I'm tired--and boy, was I tired--and I cough occasionally...oh, yeah, NEVER. Still, I chalked it up to being tired. Period.

And Monday, I woke with a horrible headache, congestion that wiped out seeing (I could see shadow and light), hearing, speaking, tasting, and smelling. I could do nothing but lie there. I didn't want to do anything but lie there!! I blew my nose and coughed. I had a fever--this was hindsight information--so I wasn't thinking at all. I didn't take any herbs or aspirin until Wednesday, when Marste, who'd called me to make sure I wasn't dead, said, "Well, you ARE taking silver, aren't you??!!" It hadn't occurred to me! Ha!

To put this into perspective, I'll just say that I would throw illness-appropriate herbs at my children when they were sick. I'd restrict them to a couch, a bathroom, and put the tv remote into a plastic bag. There was NO WAY I wanted to deal with three sick kids! It worked, by the way. BUT I now have the reputation of being the weird lady on the hill (a small hill, but hey!) the neighbors go to with health issues when they, or their kids, get sick. Marste gleefully pointed this out recently! And I know this stuff because of multiple drug allergies in my mom, myself, and Jenna, to list us in order of generation. It's handy information, let me tell you!

Anyway, I staggered downstairs to find silver and found myrrh gum capsules, instead. Good enough. And at that point, I at least stopped getting worse. I stayed the same for two weeks, recuperated enough the third week to watch all the do-it-yourself networks on very loud volume, and by the fourth week, I could go downstairs and sit on the couch and watch stuff, as opposed to stay upstairs and sit on the bed and watch stuff! Little distinction, but enough to matter to me!

This last week was the fifth week, and I've been trying to play catch-up. The problem is that I'm still not well! AND I have no stamina. I went to Costco yesterday, and I had to sit down on the edge of a refrigerator case. An employee actually asked me if I needed a wheel chair! Ha! I didn't, but I sat there for several minutes, letting my heart figure out that I really hadn't just run five miles, so it could stop pounding. Brother!!!

At each flu point in my life, the reason for getting it has been the same: too much mental and physical activity, too much stress, and not enough sleep. The lesson: QUIT IT!, to put it succinctly. At 16, I didn't want to quit it. At 36, it was a good theory, but I had a 3-year-old, an 8-year-old, and a 12-year old, and I was homeschooling. (It's a good thing they weren't in school; I couldn't have driven them to and from!) I didn't see how I could change anything.

At 56, the situation is different. I run and gun for different reasons, but the stress level is the same. This bout with flu has been interesting; it's lasted so long, that I am no longer plugged in to people or situations that I thought needed my attention five weeks ago. So, I can now choose what I want in my life. BUT I've spent 56 years "running and gunning," and not doing so makes me feel lazy--even though I'm now following guidance (FINALLY), and learning to meditate and reading about healers and healing. Since I still have no stamina, I can't run and gun, but breaking lifelong patterns is challenging, at best! This week, I planned one thing every day (like, return a package of batteries to a local store, and other things equally unimportant), but it's Thursday, and I've already overdone things! Amazing!

I'm intending to learn this lesson, though. Otherwise, since each flu bout gets longer and much worse, I figure that by 76, I'll become an "elderly statistic!" Ha!

20-year cycle!

This isn't really "pressed between two generations."

My dad died August 22, 2009, we buried him on Aug. 31, we started going through his "packrat-style" decorated house, Steve's mom started having more trouble, she died October 22, and we buried her on Oct. 31. And then came legal stuff, then Christmas, and then Disney World in Florida for 6 days. The Sunday we were home, I had a scratchy throat, but I was tired, and since this is often the cause of scratchy throats for me, I ignored it and started picking up where I'd left off before we left.

I didn't realize it at the time, but I had the flu. I'm not writing this to feel sorry for myself, because although I feel horrible, I'm kind of amused. And I'm right on schedule: I get a seriously nasty flu every 20 years.

When I was 16, I got the "Asian" flu, which involved a lot of muscle cramping. Unfortunately for me, no one recognized it in the first few patients--which DID include me! At one point, the guy I was dating at the time came over to visit me, and my mother let him in!!!!!!! I felt like hell, let him know it, and said he should leave. I was irascible! The poor kid had ridden his 10-speed bike 8 miles from his house to see me! What a welcome! Ha!

My parents and brother got it the next week, by which time someone had decided to try muscle relaxants. Low and behold, they worked. I hated my family so much that week! Ha!

When I was 36, I got another flu. I don't remember the name, but I do remember living in a new house among still-packed boxes--we'd been there for 10 days--and I woke on Christmas morning with the flu. Now, none of us, most especially the three daughters, wanted to be in this brand-new house with sheets on the windows on Christmas Day--although I felt so horrible that I considered asking them to go without me. The plan was for us to pack all the presents into the van and hightail it down to my parents' house, where we would mess up THEIR living room, THEIR kitchen, and THEIR dining room, and we didn't have to constantly watch the kids, because there were 2 more pairs of eyes helping! I decided I wouldn't say anything.

My mom, understanding a kid's impatience on Christmas Day, insisted we get there at 6:00 a.m. (An hour's drive, plus packing beforehand had me up at 3 a.m.--not conducive to healing! Ha!) So, we did. I decided I would go, sit across the room from the tree and mountain of gifts, and not breathe on anyone. I'd survived long days without sleep the night before, and if I could hold it together on other times, I could hold it together for 3/4 of a day! What was I, a wimp??

So, I listened to shouts of laughter that made my headache worse, the noisy toys--thanks, Mom!--and I was helping to pick up shredded wrapping paper before it hit me that I absolutely couldn't go through with this. I was in complete misery.

I threw away the stuff in my hands, found my purse, and told Steve I'd had it. He was less than thrilled, because my mother always fried bacon and eggs for him on Christmas Day, and this is one of his favorite meals. He even asked me if I could wait that long! Ha! It's even funnier that I considered it seriously, because I knew, in my heart of hearts, that I was very, very ill and needed to lie down!

As everybody gathered up Barbie bits, My Little Pony bits, and a few generic things for 3-year-old Chelsea (who had no opinion as to which "collection" she thought was wonderful), my dad came up to me and said, "I'm going to miss our traditional glass of wine together on Christmas Day." I hadn't realized this had become a "tradition" in his mind; I was going to tell him that I didn't want to do it anymore, because I was tired for the rest of the afternoon! Ha! I didn't roll my physical eyes--it would have hurt too much!--and, at 8:00 a.m., I mustered up a more-or-less smile, and said, "Okay, Dad. You pour it, and I'll drink it." He did, we toasted, and I did--straight down. I figured if I passed out in the car, it wouldn't matter. Steve was driving, and I'd get an hour of sleep! Ha! AND there was the "pain killer" aspect that had me drinking wine at 8 a.m.!!!

We got home at 9:00 a.m. I found some aspirin, a blanket, and I commandeered the couch and the remote, in that order. The others wandered around, feeling lost. Neither Mom nor Grandma was around to orchestrate anything. Yours truly had found "Mr. Roberts," followed by "Ensign Pulver," on tv, and since seeing me lie down at anytime was an anomaly, the girls were too scared to talk to me. Good.

Steve had no such compunctions. I finally suggested he call my mom, because it hurt me to talk, and I was having trouble stringing sentences together in a coherent fashion, anyway. He didn't call. Instead, he sat down with a pencil and paper and made a list: canned ham, 1 can yams with syrup, 1 bag marshmallows, and 1 can refrigerated biscuits. He went to the local store, returned with his treasures, to the dubious stares of 2 of his daughters and to the vocal consternation of the 12-year-old Marste. "I can do this!" he said in a ringing voice--kind of like a politician you wonder about. Marste wasn't convinced.

He did make dinner. He opened his canned ham and put it on a baking dish. He put it in the oven, according to the can's directions. He opened his yams and poured yams and syrup into another baking dish. He topped this with most of the bag of marshmallows and put it in the oven with the ham. (Jenna suggested they toast the rest on forks over the gas stove's flames, which Steve thought was a great idea! Snacks!) And he put the biscuits, edges touching (!) in a round cake pan and sat them next to the stove, awaiting their turn for the oven.

Steve was very proud of himself, but the girls weren't thrilled with dinner. The ham tasted like canned ham, which he thought was okay but the girls thought tasted like "can." I thought the funniest part was the yams. I could hear the girls exclaim that this wasn't "right" and Steve protesting that he thought the yams would melt. If I could have laughed, I would have. Marste kept telling him, "I told you so!" which went over in a big way. The biscuits were perfect--Steve had cooked these before--and they disappeared post haste.

Steve nibbled on the rest for the next few days. His ungrateful daughters stuck to fruit, whatever bags of celery and carrot sticks I'd chopped a couple of days before I got sick, peanut butter sandwiches, and hot dogs.

The current flu deserves its own post. Ha!