Illness

I'm not often ill, I'm pleased to say, but yesterday I woke up feeling just a little bit queasy.
I didn't like the way it felt - - it felt as though it was only going to get worse.

So, at lightning speed into the shower, (old thinking from when I was pregnant: There is No Way I am Going to Hospital Without a Shower First) checked on Emily who had been ill the previous day but was luckily now a bit better, briefly considered breakfast, thought better of it, thought about the roast lamb with roast potatoes and peas and mint sauce which we had eaten the previous evening - - and kept trying not to think about it - - and it kept coming back into my head - - (and, no, that wasn't the cause of it because Stephen and Gareth ate copious quantities and were fine and even the recovering Emily had some)

and finally I lay down on the sofa and started to feel really, REALLY ill - - -
until at about eleven o'clock I thought oh no, going to be sick - -
and was, a bit, and had a spectacular nose bleed to accompany it (I don't often get nose bleeds either)

and then lay on the sofa and thought I was dying for a couple of hours and was sick again - -

and then went to bed and slept for most of the afternoon - -

and woke up and lay on the sofa and continued to think I was dying --

(and all this time there was nobody in our office, which would normally really worry me, but I was too busy thinking I was dying to care)

and then I went to bed at half past ten for a bit of blissful escape from feeling so terrible - -

and then I woke up this morning BETTER! So much better I wanted to do EVERYTHING and SAVE THE WORLD and CLEAN THE WHOLE HOUSE and JUMP ABOUT SHOUTING HURRAH, I'M BETTER!

But I didn't, I lay on the sofa, mostly, and watched Fear of Fanny, an entertaining play about the amazingly monstrous Fanny Cradock, television cook of my youth. Because I knew that if I did all the things I wanted to do I might be ill again.

So this evening I'm a bit weak and wobbly but STILL BETTER and made spag bol for tea and ate some.

Oh, how easily brought down we are by illness: it's twenty-one years since I felt as ill as I did yesterday (and then I was dying, I just managed not to, thanks largely to a huge blood transfusion). It reminded me how grateful those of us who are generally in good health should be for that simple fact.

In 1984, after losing my first baby and becoming severely anaemic I was ill for three months - didn't eat anything much for the whole time because if I ate I was immediately sick: my skin turned green, I looked incredibly thin, I could hardly move as my muscles were seizing up and I felt really, really terrible with a dreadful kind of sinking feeling.

Yesterday was just a reminder of how lucky I was to survive, and how I should cheer for each day of health I have.