January 13, 2004
join this
I'll get to the join this! entry in one moment... Quick update on all things crazy - Jay is still crossing. We're in the process of legally covering our butts. We should know more as the day progresses. Joseph may have pink eye, just what we need. And to top it all off with lots of icing... My Uncle Rex passed away yesterday. At what point do you throw in the towel??Do you remember feeling really ill? As a child or perhaps more recently? Tell us the story.
I remember several times of feeling really awful. Pneumonia (is that how you spell that?), bronchitis, ear infections, chicken pox, food poisoning, stomach flu, concussions. But one time, I got sun poisoining. I'm an Irish girl. I do, however, have a grandmother who was American Indian. The only physical characteristic that left me with was a propensity to tan easilly and fast, so the sun was never very prohibitive for me. My father and I went on a whale watching trip when I was about 19 years old. It was either February or April, I can't remember which, and we were bundled up as it was terribly cold. The only part showing was my face. After the trip, we got in the truck, and my dad commented that it looked like I got a little sun. There was no sun out that day, so we thought it was perhaps the wind from the boat. By the time we got home, I was a radiating red. I put noxema really thick all over, and it soothed the burn. By that night, I was in the emergency room with my eyes swelling. It turns out I had ultraviolet poisoning. There was nothing they could do. My eyes ended up swelling shut. The water in your body goes to the burned areas in order to cool it, which is why you get blisters with a bad burn. Well, the skin around the eye is the thinnest on your body, and instead of the rest of my face, the water went directly for the eyes. The rest of my face was fairly bloated as well. I had to take 2 days off work, as I couldn't see out of my eyes. The tripiest part was, when I went back to work, I kept getting stopped to ask why I didn't have a visitor's badge. These are people I worked with every day. They didn't recognize me, my face was THAT swollen.
What keeps you going when you really feel Awful?
As a child nothing. Just sort of turned into a ball on the couch til the offending virus or whatever went away. Now, it's a different story. My kids still have to be taken care of. The diapers still need to be changed, and bottles made, and kiddos fed. Who else is going to do it, with our crazy schedule. It's me on call.
What inspires you to find the road back to health?
Well, who wants to stay that way? The sickness itself inspires me.
