In Sickness and in Health...

Holiday greetings from the sickbed 🤒

Greetings from a sickbed.

I don’t know if I somehow conjured the wrath of a Scottish demon, but I came down with something wicked and have been out the past 36 hours. I don’t know what they’re putting in illnesses these days, but this one was a doozie. I had a full buffet of symptoms—fever, chills, a wicked cough, nausea, vomiting, and an absolutely pounding headache.

I felt like my head was going to pop! I couldn’t lie down because the pressure in my temples was too intense, so I have been wandering around my house like a very sad ghost at all hours of the night

and sleeping upright in a chair for a few hours here and there to keep the blood from running to my head, all the while battling chills and night sweats.

I kept thinking, how sick do you have to be to die?

It was like childbirth, but worse.

I seem to be through the thickest of it now, and I'm actually feeling quite cheerful to not have a splitting headache anymore, or to be keeled over a toilet bowl, or to be alternately sweating or freezing to death. My family is still in recovery, and right now they’re all piled in heaps of blankets around the house like so many cocoons of disease. It seems like we’re all turning a corner, but it’s been a rough couple of days.

My German grandma used to say “at least you have your health!” whenever something bad would come up in our lives, and I’m really feeling that today as I munch on saltines and sip my watered-down gatorade.

I don’t have the energy to get back to my Christmas to-do list, but does that really matter? Our house is warm, our family is together, the gatorade is flowing. We will probably be over the worst of it come Christmas, so there’s something to be grateful for in that.

I hope your holidays are just beautiful. I know sometimes it feels like scraping the bottom of the barrel for bits of joy and relief from suffering, but I hope that you find it. And when you do, I hope you find more of it than you expected.

At least you have your health! (Sometimes.)

All my love,

🤒Becca Lee, Haunted Librarian🤒