A little while ago I was feeling very sorry for myself. I felt proper poorly. Felt rotten. At one time I even felt like I was about to leave this earth. The end was nigh. Was I suffering some dreadful malady? NO. Was I suffering some incurable illness? NO. So what was the problem? I HAD A COLD!
Just a miserable cold – not even a dose of the flu. But for a few days it made me feel bad. OK, so I’m pathetic. Now that I’m better I am feeling suitably ashamed at making such a fuss about a cold when so many people in the world really are ill and sadly so many will never get better, but for those few days there I was, selfishly, the only one who mattered to me.
I wonder why is it that something like a cold, such a simple illness – which is completely curable with a bit of bed rest – can bring a reasonably healthy person to their knees and can make that person check their Will to make sure everything is in order. Just in case.
Being a fairly private person, I usually keep quiet when I have a health problem and do not broadcast the fact. My husband says that’s because I like to think of myself as a bit of a martyr. I don’t think that’s it at all – well maybe just a tad.
My mother-in-law once told me that I should tell people when I had anything wrong as it helped – no it doesn’t. It just gives the other person the opportunity to tell you how they have either got the same thing, had it last week, last year, will be getting it soon, can feel it coming on, will have it maybe next year and so on, but much worse than yours. Just the sort of thing you want to hear, not!
Anyway, this time I am talking about it, because I am OK again. Fighting fit. When I told him indoors how I was feeling at the time he said it sounded like I had a bad cold. Well of course it was a ‘bad’ cold – why do people say ‘bad’ cold or ‘bad’ cough? I’ve never heard of a good one! Wonder what a good cold would be like.
I was shivery yet felt very hot. Why does everything seem so much worse during the night? I felt so lousy that I was sure an ambulance would be needed to whizz me off at any minute because my temperature must be sky high.
Then I took my temperature and with great trepidation read the result – it was NORMAL! How could it be normal when I felt so bad! The thermometer must be faulty. No other explanation. Wasn’t going to do me any favours being normal (not a word often associated with me at the best of times) – and certainly wouldn’t get me any sympathetic care.
I was feeling so sorry for myself that for a moment I was tempted to have a hot drink and then take my temperature again just for the sympathy it might evoke – but I really felt too ill and miserable to bother, and didn’t think it would work anyway either with the thermometer reading or the evoking of sympathetic care. I’ve already mentioned I really was pathetic.
Just before I drifted off to sleep, in my miserable state I started to think a bit about one’s mortality. My own that is. I tried to remember if I had told my family what to do with me afterwards when ‘that’ day comes? I was pretty sure I had. Hope they remember what I’ve said. Perhaps I’d better put it down in writing as they never listen to the old girl at the best of times. Have put myself down as an organ donor but my parts, my bits and pieces, are now so old that I doubt they’d be much good. They’re pretty much at their use-by date now. Are definitely well past the ‘best by’ one.
Would donate the old body to a University to do with it what they will in the name of medical science for a bit of research but think that maybe they will reject it. Not looking that great these days, would that matter? But to be rejected, that really would be the pits! Having your body rejected by people wanting to cut it up…imagine the shame of that! Not that it would bother me by then of course.
I was hoping that I would get a nice sort of send-off. Hope they crack open a couple of bottles of the good stuff to go with the obligatory tea, coffee and biscuits. Cheers, dears! They could scatter my ashes where they chose to – though if I had my way they would be scattered on a race-track so that I could spook the horses that have let me down over the years. Get my own back as it were. Or maybe they could just throw me to the wind.
I wondered who’d come to that final send-off. Would be interesting to know. I hope that at least a few people would manage to spare the time. They are all so busy these days. I knew a very brave woman who really was in the last stages of a terminal illness, poor thing, and she had her wake while she was still alive! The way I was feeling though I didn’t think I’d have time to make all the necessary arrangements.
I eventually drifted off to sleep, and was already feeling much better when I woke up. What a cry-baby I had been. Surprising what sleep can do.
That was a little while ago – now I am my old chirpy self again. Well the old bit is right anyway and as much as I chirp I can’t change that fact. How stupidly I have over-dramatised everything. The sun is shining, it’s a beautiful day. Am lucky to be alive, feeling well and able to enjoy it, must count my blessings.
Am still going to check my Will though to make sure it’s up-to-date. Not that it’s worth much. A friend of mine said she really should update her’s as the last time she did this was when her husband left her and she became a single mother with 5 children under the age of 8. She quickly changed her Will and made her sister guardian of the children in case anything happened to her. The thing is that her youngest ‘child’ is now 45!
On that note I’ll crack open one of those bottles of the good stuff and wish everyone good health – including myself!
Just a miserable cold – not even a dose of the flu. But for a few days it made me feel bad. OK, so I’m pathetic. Now that I’m better I am feeling suitably ashamed at making such a fuss about a cold when so many people in the world really are ill and sadly so many will never get better, but for those few days there I was, selfishly, the only one who mattered to me.
I wonder why is it that something like a cold, such a simple illness – which is completely curable with a bit of bed rest – can bring a reasonably healthy person to their knees and can make that person check their Will to make sure everything is in order. Just in case.
Being a fairly private person, I usually keep quiet when I have a health problem and do not broadcast the fact. My husband says that’s because I like to think of myself as a bit of a martyr. I don’t think that’s it at all – well maybe just a tad.
My mother-in-law once told me that I should tell people when I had anything wrong as it helped – no it doesn’t. It just gives the other person the opportunity to tell you how they have either got the same thing, had it last week, last year, will be getting it soon, can feel it coming on, will have it maybe next year and so on, but much worse than yours. Just the sort of thing you want to hear, not!
Anyway, this time I am talking about it, because I am OK again. Fighting fit. When I told him indoors how I was feeling at the time he said it sounded like I had a bad cold. Well of course it was a ‘bad’ cold – why do people say ‘bad’ cold or ‘bad’ cough? I’ve never heard of a good one! Wonder what a good cold would be like.
I was shivery yet felt very hot. Why does everything seem so much worse during the night? I felt so lousy that I was sure an ambulance would be needed to whizz me off at any minute because my temperature must be sky high.
Then I took my temperature and with great trepidation read the result – it was NORMAL! How could it be normal when I felt so bad! The thermometer must be faulty. No other explanation. Wasn’t going to do me any favours being normal (not a word often associated with me at the best of times) – and certainly wouldn’t get me any sympathetic care.
I was feeling so sorry for myself that for a moment I was tempted to have a hot drink and then take my temperature again just for the sympathy it might evoke – but I really felt too ill and miserable to bother, and didn’t think it would work anyway either with the thermometer reading or the evoking of sympathetic care. I’ve already mentioned I really was pathetic.
Just before I drifted off to sleep, in my miserable state I started to think a bit about one’s mortality. My own that is. I tried to remember if I had told my family what to do with me afterwards when ‘that’ day comes? I was pretty sure I had. Hope they remember what I’ve said. Perhaps I’d better put it down in writing as they never listen to the old girl at the best of times. Have put myself down as an organ donor but my parts, my bits and pieces, are now so old that I doubt they’d be much good. They’re pretty much at their use-by date now. Are definitely well past the ‘best by’ one.
Would donate the old body to a University to do with it what they will in the name of medical science for a bit of research but think that maybe they will reject it. Not looking that great these days, would that matter? But to be rejected, that really would be the pits! Having your body rejected by people wanting to cut it up…imagine the shame of that! Not that it would bother me by then of course.
I was hoping that I would get a nice sort of send-off. Hope they crack open a couple of bottles of the good stuff to go with the obligatory tea, coffee and biscuits. Cheers, dears! They could scatter my ashes where they chose to – though if I had my way they would be scattered on a race-track so that I could spook the horses that have let me down over the years. Get my own back as it were. Or maybe they could just throw me to the wind.
I wondered who’d come to that final send-off. Would be interesting to know. I hope that at least a few people would manage to spare the time. They are all so busy these days. I knew a very brave woman who really was in the last stages of a terminal illness, poor thing, and she had her wake while she was still alive! The way I was feeling though I didn’t think I’d have time to make all the necessary arrangements.
I eventually drifted off to sleep, and was already feeling much better when I woke up. What a cry-baby I had been. Surprising what sleep can do.
That was a little while ago – now I am my old chirpy self again. Well the old bit is right anyway and as much as I chirp I can’t change that fact. How stupidly I have over-dramatised everything. The sun is shining, it’s a beautiful day. Am lucky to be alive, feeling well and able to enjoy it, must count my blessings.
Am still going to check my Will though to make sure it’s up-to-date. Not that it’s worth much. A friend of mine said she really should update her’s as the last time she did this was when her husband left her and she became a single mother with 5 children under the age of 8. She quickly changed her Will and made her sister guardian of the children in case anything happened to her. The thing is that her youngest ‘child’ is now 45!
On that note I’ll crack open one of those bottles of the good stuff and wish everyone good health – including myself!
