Small Victories
As I write this I am getting over a cold, gearing up for one of the busiest seasons at work, and trying to figure out how to get the cat to stop sleeping on the stovetop. All while I’m supposed to be enjoying this weekend before the craziness begins in earnest at the office. So many first world problems!
All of which is to say I’m struggling to find something to write about today. While I have more energy and am not coughing as much, I’m still congested and getting tired faster than usual. I’ve been completely thrown off my routine of working out and eating better. My lungs simply will not tolerate more than the minimum amount of physical activity, and I don’t have too much of an appetite so I’m just eating whatever appeals to me which is resulting in the diet of a picky twelve year old.
Pre-pandemic I never would have complained this much about a cold. Granted, this is a fairly wretched cold that has lasted longer than usual, but I still never used to complain quite this much. Perhaps it is a function of having an older body that feels the impact of a cold more intensely. Perhaps it is the fact that during the pandemic I was almost never sick. I stopped getting the common cold twice a year as I always used to, so I forgot just how terrible a cold can feel. To be honest I’m quite surprised that I’m not scared of having a cold because of the degree to which it restricts one’s breathing. You’d think I’d be losing my addled little mind over it, but no, I just lay on the couch and feel sorry for myself and then eat some Spaghettios.
When I first came down with this illness I was worried because my Fitbit kept telling me that my heartrate was higher that normal. I’d be laying on in bed not moving and my heartrate would be in the 80s or 90s. This freaked me out, so I took a Covid test to see if maybe I was dealing with something more serious than just a cold. The test was negative, which did make me feel slightly better, and I resolved to just rest and drink a ton of fluids to try to flush out the demons. I also took lots of naps. My days became much more about the small victories: being able to breathe out of my nose for a few minutes, remembering what time I had taken the cold medicine so I knew when I could take it again, getting the cat to snuggle me for comfort. Those were really the only things that mattered in my mind during the worst of it.
When I got a cold pre-pandemic I would still go to work. I would ignore my body telling me I needed rest and ignore the common sense that I probably shouldn’t go share my germs around the office. It was totally normal to push through feeling like absolute crap. This past week I did still work, but I worked from home. (I would have taken sick days except that the volume of work in this season makes it not worth it to get behind.) I didn’t go out until I knew what I had wasn’t Covid, and even then I worked very hard to keep my distance from people and limit my time in public. (Which was part a function of being sick, but also because I don’t really like people that much.)
The last few brain cells I have that aren’t currently in bed with the sniffles are trying to find a point here. I guess it’s that I’m glad that things have changed enough that I don’t feel obligated to show up at work even when I’m sick. Feeling like crap actually feels like a legitimate reason to take it easy now, which it never did before. So hey, there’s one tiny benefit to that whole global pandemic thing.
Small victory.
