sick of being sick

I'm in a flu blur. I tried going to the clinic in the morning. I could barely get out of bed and was about to pass out just getting dressed. Chris took me to the clinic, but after an hour of waiting, I decided to go to my stats/regression class, but that turned out to be incredibly frustrating. The prof spent 25 minutes (yes I was watching the clock) talking about the rave reviews he got during our mid-semester evaluation and then just made fun of the people who didn't give positive feedback. Why am I suffering to be there, I thought? Fortunately, I wasn't in the frame of mind to calculate how much of our 40k/year tuition was going toward that. After class, I fumbled my way to the Kschool cafe to get some soup since I hadn't eaten anything. I couldn't imagine talking to anyone, so I got it to go and went to walk back over to the clinic. Rats, I had to make small talk with a few people.

One of the sickest days of my life also happened to be one of the coldest in Boston this year. I was so miserable walking the three blocks back to the clinic. It felt like 10 miles. This time, when I walked into reception to sign in again, the receptionist took a look at me and quickly came around to help me go in front of the five other people in line. She rushed me to a room and helped me to lay down. Then, a nurse(?) came in to check my vitals, helped me get my soup, and generally just loved and nurtured me. That's how I felt. I've been having such a tough time keeping up with my schedule and rushing back every day to take care of my kids and then staying up late to work - all with a cold/allergies and now the flu this semester, that I just really needed someone to say, "It's ok to lay down in the middle of the day" (especially when I'm sick, for God's sake). It really just didn't feel ok before then because I just felt like I had so many things to "do." This actually always happened to me when I'm sick - it always feel impossible to "schedule" being sick - there's no time! But when I finally figured out that I could cancel my section and rest and sleep and just catch up later, I felt much better. Letting go of the "should-todos" is so tough....

I always think that when I get sick it's my body's way of saying, "Hello, I tried to tell you to slow down, but you didn't, so now I'm forcing you to."