In sickness and in health…

Monday night I had a tiny scratch in my throat. Tuesday morning, I could swear a truck had run me over in my sleep. By Wednesday evening I was a mess. In my cough/cold medicine induced fog, I drove home from work and found myself on the far left hand side of the freeway wondering… when did I change lanes?

I came home, dropped my bag on the floor, and collapsed on the couch. My toes cramped so bad they resembled a hobbit…minus the hair of course. Whatever crummy cold virus I caught started attacking my right eye so I couldn’t close or open it. It was stuck at that awkward halfway point, which surprisingly was a good thing because it covered the white of my eye… which was no longer white but a bright red.

After a couple hours, I had grown tired of constantly wiping my nose so I jammed a tissue up it. I was holding onto my toes in an attempt to get them turned the right way, and the constant ‘I’m going to sneeze feeling’ caused my eyes to water so much it looked as if I had been sobbing.


That’s when Chris came home and I sincerely wondered if I had ever looked worse. I looked at him – well, with one eye anyway - and thought, ‘Please, please love me anyway’.

I could romanticize it and say he picked me up, carried me to bed, and fed me soup while I watched Judge Judy but… that’s not what happened.

Instead, he laughed at me.

Thanks.


But I’m feeling so very miserable that I’ve actually been watching what I eat in an attempt to get better. I’ve been taking vitamins, adding whole wheat and grains into my meals, and I’ve stopped eating sweets completely.

This is a big deal because…

I’ve modified my diet precisely two times in my life. Once, when I was 19, I tried a go at anorexia. It my twisted teenage mind I thought, ‘Well it worked well for my sister, so it should work for me.’ I had made my decision to become an anorexic at 8AM. At 12PM the same day, my friend asked me to go to lunch. My bout with anorexia lasted exactly 4 hours.

The second time was when I hit 24. I was grazing 120 pounds but I thought I would look oh so svelte in my wedding dress if I were 110. Mom and Liz had done a ‘Liver Cleansing’ diet where you eat all healthy, natural foods for 8 weeks. I started but after a record 20 days I could no longer resist the temptation of a carne asada burrito. Maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad on it’s own but following it with 5 rolled tacos and carne asada fries…well. You get it.

We’ll see how it goes. I’m on day three of whole wheat bagels and lettuce with flax seeds and I’m starting to feel better.

As long as no one says, “Hilberto’s”, I’ll be OK.