Monday, November 9, 2009

Illness in children vs. adults

I was sick a lot as a child. I had tubes in my ears twice because of ear infections. I finally had my tonsils out when I was a freshman in high school after many rounds of strep throat. I lost count how many times I drank that yucky pink amoxicillan.
I have two vivid memories of being sick as a child.
1. I am a perfectionist. What I hated the most about being sick was I didn't have the energy to clean up my room. I laid in bed thinking-if I just felt well enough to pick up the dirty dishes (usually tea and toast that my mom delivered to me) and pick up the dirty tissues, this room would look SO much better... Sometimes my mom would "rescue" me and come do these little tasks for me and I would immediately feel better even if I didn't get better immediately.

I still am a perfectionist. Imagine how much these thoughts are magnified when the Lambs are also sick today. I sit on my chair and think-if I only had energy to pick up the toys that we didn't get picked up on Tuesday before we got sick, if only I had the energy to pick up the dirty tissues, if only I had the energy to do the dishes, this room would look SO much better... Thankfully Ram is not sick this time so he is able to rescue me a little bit from these thoughts like my mom used to do for me! I haven't been down to my laundry room since Tuesday and I refuse to go down there until I'm better.

2. My other memory is it seemed like I was always sick on the most beautiful weather days when I was a child. I hated being stuck inside when I could hear kids playing outside and hear people mowing the grass etc.

This feeling was magnified hundreds of times for me last week. It rained or snowed 27 out of 31 days in October. When we were sick we finally had some nice sunny days and some of the days were even in the 50s. I almost cried every time I had to answer one of them that we couldn't go outside while we were sick. We didn't take very many Halloween costume photos because of the cold rainy weather. It would have been the perfect opportunity to take photos last week but we were too sick.

I don't know which is more difficult, being the sick child or the sick adult? What do you think? One of my friends said she always feels bad when the mom is sick because then who takes care of mom? Thankfully Ram stayed healthy so he took care of us.

1 comment:

Dakotapam said...

Both sick child and sick adult are no fun! It looks like we're in for another week of nice weather...I hope you guys can soak some of it up!