Sick Days

Alright, so I got a little behind in my September posts because life (and honestly not checking the calendar that I made for myself). And then I got a little behind on my October posts because I got infected with a virus. So, I’m going to touch on two of the posts that I hope to get up in the next week: self care and burnout.

Plan A: Post about filling your cup before helping others (Self Care Sunday). Now, I think it is very obvious why I couldn’t post because I was overworked and really tired and sick. I couldn’t think long enough to write a post. In fact, I originally started writing this post yesterday and ended up deleting everything because it didn’t make any sense. In short, I couldn’t give you anything because I had nothing in myself. This is essentially the basis of my planned post, but that one will have a lot more meat for you 🙂

Plan B: Post about burnout at work. First I need to be honest and say that I let burnout win between when I realized it was coming and I should take some notes and between when the post was actually planned. Now that I’ve disclosed the truth, I can also say that it could have been much worse than what it was. I’m still pretty excited for this post. 

I had a few others that were in the works, and I’m still planning on working on those in the coming days/weeks. But right now let’s talk about this virus and how it invaded my life this week. So on Saturday, I’m enjoying life at a wedding. I’m enjoying the Fuzzy’s margarita I’m sharing with my husband (mid-wedding adventure in St. Charles). I’m talking with my friends at the wedding, and suddenly I notice that my throat is sore. And I’m like “okay, alright, we’ve been yelling over the music. We were getting rowdy with our liquid courage at Fuzzy’s, no big deal.” Woke up the next morning with a sore throat AND post-nasal drip. So yeah, I’m definitely coming down with something. My brain is already moving more slowly, I’m dreading this. I took a bath before bed, which was fine. Honestly, I wanted to relax but I was just so tired that it didn’t really help. I took an extra vitamin, because that’s my go-to when I’m sick. A Google search suggested that zinc may be able to bind to the virus and clear it, so maybe this is why it works. I don’t know, but whenever I do it early, it always seems to kick my symptoms away.

So, come Monday, I’m like I absolutely have to go to work because otherwise my cells are going to die and I have this experiment that I really can’t put off and I don’t trust anybody else to set it up (read: this is the first time I’m doing it and I don’t trust myself to explain it properly). My face is hurting something major, but that was cleared up entirely with two ibuprofen. Monday night I took an extra vitamin and I definitely went to bed with a fever, the exact number was not measured because of the exceptionally hot shower I took that did not actually warm me up (well, I didn’t feel warm. My thermometer disagreed). I woke up Tuesday and felt better, but still ran out of energy very early. Now, today, Wednesday, hump day, Mean Girls Day, I still have energy well into the evening. I still made sure that I was taking it easy and not working myself too hard, but honestly, this morning went by so fast because I had so many things to check off my list. It was great. 

It appears that I am on the mend and I hope that it stays this way. I’m looking forward to getting back in the game.