Do you know the monty python song, I’m a lumberjack? Well my mum used to sing me her own version called I’m a hypochondriac and I’m OK. I have found myself always trying to solider on through any illness for fear of being a hypochondriac ever since my childhood.
At the moment I have some sort of flu, I feel like hammered shite. But I also have a baby to take care of so I keep on trying to pretend that everything is fine, then I do too much and feel even worse.
This morning, instead of painting a big red cross on the front door to warn the world to stay away from germ land, I make rocky road cakes and cleaned out the fridge. I have no desire to eat anything due to feeling so rubbish, so I am not sure why I felt compelled to make sweet treats, but I did.
I really must learn to allow myself to be sick occasionally, you know, like when I actually am. I have had many moments in my life that should have taught me this lesson, but even though I know what I SHOULD be doing, you will nearly always find me doing the opposite.
I lived in a big, mouldy flat for six years. I loved it there, it was cheap, I could do whatever I wanted to and the landlord took care of the garden, so I always had a great garden to be in with zero effort.
Living with mould will eventually screw your lungs up. Especially if you immune system is taking a weekly hammering on the weekends by far too much partying. My lungs decided to show me that they were not invincible by coming down with pneumonia. Thinking that I must just have a particularly nasty flu, I tried to soldier on. My housemate found me collapsed, covered in sweat, wheezing and feeling like I was drowning from the inside.
I sent myself to bed and called in sick for work. Thanks to that lovely housemate I didn’t die. He would bring me cartons of juice and bars of chocolate. I would crawl on my hands and knees to the bathroom. When I felt up to walking to the end of my road (my doctors surgery was located there) I made my way to the GP.
He was horrified. Apparently the week that I had been languishing in bed, sweating and falling in and out of fevered sleep, I should have actually been in a hospital bed. I had managed to not die because only my right lung had succumbed to the illness. Good old lefty kept me alive, that and galaxy chocolate. I had passed the major hump of the illness so I was allowed to stay at home with a big pile of tablets.
My doctor had asked me why I hadn’t called him to my house. My reaction, “Don’t be silly, I am not a hypochondriac, I came to see you as soon as I could walk here.” He kindly explained that if you are too ill to walk the length of your road, you are most definitely not a hypochondriac and that the surgery would happily send someone to make sure that I didn’t die.
How funny that teasing from my mum has shaped my whole outlook on illness. I am probably responsible for the spread of germs all over the place due to my reluctance to rest and get better. Instead I will cough and sneeze my way around public transport, supermarkets, the pub etc…
I don’t remember fawning around the living room as a child, complaining that there were dreadful things wrong with me, I must have done though, otherwise my mum would not have felt the need to tailor a song to make fun of this behaviour. I think it worked a bit too well.
If I become a zombie one day I expect I shall be leading the herd, assuming that I am completely fine, merrily eating the living and trying to go to work.
Haha loved this! Seriously though, rest up you mental! X
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I will try…..x
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