September 17, 2014 by Amy

Crawling back out

I haven’t written in a long time. A LONG time. Mostly because I’ve been sick. This was different than my annual head cold/flu thing where one good day in bed kicks it and I’m pretty much back to normal. This has been two-plus weeks of hacking and coughing, gasping for air, becoming winded after walking 20 feet on a level surface, and feeling like I need a nap by 8:30 a.m. I’m still not 100%, but I’m eking ever closer.

I’m not used to being this down for this long. I’ve got too much to do for this to happen. Which is probably why it happened, come to think of it.

I had made an appointment with a new primary care physician a few months ago (she’s apparently quite popular so I had to wait) and it so happened that this initial appointment fell about a week into being sick. I was determined to find a new primary care physician after mine decided to lecture me about having only one child.

“Hmmm. What are you? Going on 40. Yeah, you’ve got enough time. You need to have another child.”

“Um. Excuse me?”

“You only have one, right? Yep. That’s not fair. She’ll grow up lonely and alone. I was an only child and I know. You need to have another child so she has a sibling.”

“Um. Excuse me?”

I tried explaining that M and I had discussed this and we are both extremely happy with our little family, and that neither of us is up to another grueling round of infertility. Didn’t matter. The alarm bells sounded in my head and I couldn’t get out of the exam room fast enough, swearing never to return.

So Bean recommended this new doctor and I went. She walked in and looked at me quizzically. “Zoe’s mom?” “Yeah, how the hell…oh, my goodness…OWEN’S MOM?!!” Our kids had gone to preschool together. Wow. Owen’s mom has a different last name than Owen so I hadn’t even put it together when I made the appointment.

The appointment went fine and she assured me I didn’t have pneumonia even though I was pretty convinced I did (thank you, WebMD) and chalked it up to bronchitis and gave me a Z-pack and cough syrup with codeine and then I got down to business.

“I’ve been feeling pretty crappy for awhile now. Like more than just illness, although at this point I am not entirely sure that my mental state isn’t tied to feeling physically bad for this long…” Which is when I lost it and started bawling my eyes out to Owen’s Mom about how I’ve felt like things are piling up and piling up and I can’t crawl out of the hole and there’s just so much to do and I don’t even have the energy to tackle half of it which just makes me feel worse and isn’t there something you can give me that’ll make me just not give a shit for awhile? Isn’t there a Just Not Give A Shit medicine? We discussed options and she eventually decided on something I can’t pronounce but takes a month to kick in so I’m giving it a whirl and meeting with her in a month to see how it’s going.

So, in addition to a frillion other things, that’s what I’ve been up to.