Je suis malade :(

I can’t tell if I am a suck or if my infrequent periods of illness create miserable company? Yesterday morning, just before 3am (anyone notice a pattern?), I woke up with the most annoying pressure and pain around my sternum, coupled with a pulsating headache and a touch of nausea, only made worse by lying on my side. Propping up my head, I went back to sleep only to push snooze and repeatedly change the wake up time on my alarm, before finally sending off an email, en français, to my boss to say I would not be in.

Despite the landline ringing repeatedly with the same private number and ongoing telemarketing calls, I eventually succumbed to answering in an annoyed gruff bear voice to tell the phone company representative, “Il n’est pas là!” (“he is not here!”), in reference to my cousin. Good for me though, as I always refuse to answer the phone if I don’t know the number, in avoidance of an awkward conversation in French.

In between watching some French TV, which is probably the 5^th time I have turned on my TV in the past 15 months, and random self diagnosing WebMD searches (likely intense heartburn or maybe a hernia, but probably not a heart attack), I tucked myself in for more slumber, comforted by the warmth of my water bottle, and slept intermittently until 4pm!

Still feeling pretty horrible, fueled only by a small piece of cereal bread with butter and jam and a vanilla yogurt, I made the short but laborious walk up the street for my weekly English teaching lesson with a friend’s daughter. Within a half hour that nauseous, want to lie down, feeling resurfaced and I knew I was not yet out of the clear. By 7:30pm I was once again in bed where I slept until 7:30 am!! I wish I could say that it was uninterrupted and dreamy, but unfortunately it was not, but at least in total it is probably more than I actually sleep in a week.

It is now 9:15 am the following morning and I am getting ready to head off to work, surprisingly still tired with a touch of nausea and a lack of appetite (this is a nice change of pace and I wouldn’t mind if it stayed around for a while J ). I guess I shouldn’t complain though since I really can’t remember the last time I was actually sick with something other than a cold or ear infection. And truth be told, good for me in taking care of myself and not going to work yesterday, as one of the biggest lessons I am learning, and continue to learn, is one of self care and self attention!