Cleaning Up Sick

I realized the other day that I'm unhappy. Not depressed, miserable, anxiety riddled, or on the verge of a meltdown, but just that general feeling of melancholy that means I spend my days in a touchy state of unhappiness. I may be doing worlds better as far as my illness goes. But the coping mechanisms I relied upon to get through my three-year relapse--basically bourbon, Taco Bell, and watching excessive amounts of television--are still very much ruling my day-to-day existence. My bad habits, and the results of said bad habits, are making me unhappy.

But this is good. Because unhappy I can work with. Unhappy I can do something about. Unhappy doesn't mean I'm descending into a cesspool of misery with no ability to pull myself out. Unhappy isn't me freaking out because I'm too sick to exert a modicum of control over my own existence. And unhappy certainly doesn't indicate I'm so full of anger, it's all I can see. Lord knows I've spent enough of my life in those places. No, unhappy simply means I've grown complacent with my life. And as a result, I'm making some not-so-great choices in order to distract myself.

Now that I recognize it, I suppose it's time to get to work. I've got to clean up the bad habits being so sick for so long left me with. But where to start when, like, everything needs to be fixed? Yes, I may have more energy, but I also have more pain now because I'm doing more. That delicate balance of taking care of me and taking care of life is something I've got to continue to respect if I want to remain on this trajectory...

This new inspiration to get my crap together is most likely inspired by epic amounts of indulgence over the holidays. My answer: on Thursday I walked/ran on the treadmill for 23 minutes. So much exertion caused a vicious stomachache of epic proportions. I had to come home and lay on the floor in writhing pain for a while. Then I was shaky and weak the rest of the afternoon and evening.

Sigh...I forgot how hard this is. Nevertheless I did eat better, stayed off the sauce, and managed to annihilate myself by doing a little exercise. No, the laundry didn't get done. But that's what tomorrow is for, isn't it? Provided I didn't just send myself into an epic flare.

Thanks for joining,

Leah

Flare or Flu?

Shortly after Thanksgiving my 101-year-old grandmother choked on a piece of food. She came through surgery okay, but after a week or so there was fluid collecting around her lungs and her heart wasn't functioning properly. Like most do when one happens to be 101, her doctors recommended hospice. I haven't seen her since her 100th birthday party, which pretty much consisted of her sitting in her wheelchair while the rest of us ran around having a blast. So last week I decided to hop on a plane and head to Arizona for a 24-hour whirlwind visit with grandma.

It was a terrifying decision. I had to weigh the potential sabotage of my newly-reclaimed health against not seeing my grandmother one last time. Which one would be easier to live with? After hemming and hawing and considering all the potential outcomes, I decided to go. I also decided I was going for me. Not to meet expectations or because of guilt or out of a sense of obligation, but because I wanted to see my grandmother when she was hopefully still coherent enough to have a conversation with me. I convinced myself if I stayed really mellow and positive the whole time, and expected to get through it without a major backslide, it just might be possible.

By the time I got there grandma had a miraculous turnaround, which isn't anything she hasn't done before. Talk of hospice had gone by the wayside as she was efficiently discharged into a skilled nursing facility as a transitional step before going home. I also remembered, in pretty short order, my family is anything but mellow. Nevertheless, it was a good visit and I'm glad I went.

Unfortunately once I returned home, I only had one day to self-care before my husband's darn company holiday party. The one I was supposed to lose ten pounds in twelve days for, but because my week was spent preparing for, executing, and recovering from this trip instead of going to the gym and obsessing over how much I wasn't eating, it didn't even come close to happening. Whatever.

So yesterday it all caught up with me. As I was sitting here watching football, all I could focus on was the feeling of my symptoms coming to life. Yet I couldn't tell if it was a flare of the flu that was on my horizon. I prayed for a flare. Paralyzed with fear, all I could think about was how many germs I was exposed to while sitting in the hospital for two days, not to mention flying on an airplane. I remembered how I was doing really well in 2015 until I got the flu, and here I am three years later just starting to pick up the pieces. It's one of those things where time is the only way to tell. This morning I woke up feeling achy and sluggish but clearly without the flu. Hallelujah! It's a flare!

It's tough, this living sick thing. As much as I'm determined to put my health first, it's an afterthought to everyone else. For years it was an afterthought to me, and I didn't do very well because of it. But last week gives me hope. I'm caring less about what people expect from me, which while making me quite unpopular (what's new), has helped stabilize my illness exponentially. As a result I'm less emotional and more in control of my life, which has made me want to start living it again. Enough so that I was able to hop on a plane, visit my grandma, come home with a flare, and not experience one bit of resentment. That's progress.

Thanks for joining,

Leah