The lucky At-Home-Mom will telephone her Mother, Mother-In-Law or perhaps an Aunt or Uncle to rescue her when she is feeling ill. Then there is the woman who will have her husband stay home from work to take care of her, and the children, when she is sick. She will even call him in the middle of the day and have him rush home because she is feeling ill. I, unfortunately, don't fall into either of those categories. I am in the category of "suck it up and get through the day".
A couple of years ago, a stomach flu was going around town. You know the kind - we have all experienced it. The severity may be different but let's just say that when you get it, you are spending a lot of time sitting on or hovering above the toilet. Well, that year the stomach flu ran through my house. I spent a lot of time washing the sheets, cleaning the bathroom, and spraying Lysol. I managed to get through it myself without having to call in the National Guard - or my husband (I probably got it over the weekend - how convenient). I remember talking to a friend of mine about it and asking her if her family had the pleasure of this particular flu. She said that everyone got it and she thinks that she had it also but she wasn't sure. She just remembers that on a Tuesday, she felt really sick to her stomach. She spent the day without eating anything and just sipped ginger ale, all day, as she completed her motherly tasks of taxi-ing the kids around to their various activities. She couldn't wait to just get through the day and get into bed. Guess what! She did have it and like so many of us in category 3 - she sucked it up!
This past week I got a cold. Instead of calling in sick like most working class Americans, I "sucked it up" (remember I am in category 3). To make matters worse, I had an action packed weekend. You know how sometimes you have nothing to do and then one weekend, you have over committed yourself. Well, that was me. Instead of cancelling something, I forged ahead only to find myself every night collapsing into bed with a throat that was on fire (among other symptoms). Finally I raised the white flag on Monday. I dropped the kids off to school and immediately made an appointment with my physician. He didn't even bother looking at my throat because he already decided to put me on antibiotics after just looking in my ears and listening to my chest. It took me 5 days to take care of myself. That night, I got my kids, ordered in and was in bed asleep by 6pm.
As for my dietary endeavors, by Sunday afternoon I found that Jujyfruit candy and warm bagels with cream cheese really did make my sore throat feel better. It is just too bad that I didn't do for myself what I would have done for my children and husband - gotten to the Doctor by the third day, taken the antibiotics and gone to bed. If I had taken care of myself, I would not have gotten as sick as I was yesterday and I would not have eaten as much as I did over the weekend. I'm still learning that food isn't the answer.
As a very wise physician once told me "When you want to eat, just go to bed. You can not eat when you are sleeping."
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