Sick Philosophy - Reprinted with Permission

I suppose sick days are my body's way of telling me that I absolutely HAVE to slow down RIGHT NOW or I will DIE. I don't take breaks very often from all of the million things that I do, and I don't write nearly as much as I really would like to (notice how it's been nearly a year since I published my first book, more than that since I FINISHED my first book, and the second one still is nowhere to be found? Yeah, I need to write more.) I just keep dreaming of this magical, mystical "someday" that will happen when I won't need to hold down a full-time teaching position, I can just teach guard, dance, and write. Those three things are so much my favorite things in life that it is almost painful for me to have to do anything else that I love even a little less!

 

So today is a sick day. I left school yesterday with a horrible hacking cough that I couldn't avoid no matter how much water I drank or how much I swallowed. The doctor told me I need more sleep. Well, there wasn't exactly a surprise there. I have been getting the "more sleep" he speaks of today, plus catching up on the reading and writing I have been meaning to do as well. Although physically I FEEL horrible, mentally I feel like I am finally getting back on track with things. I can't keep doing this to myself and I can't keep relying on other people to help me out when they don't necessarily have the time to help with my projects as well as their own lives. I love everyone who has helped me get so far, but I need to take on the responsibility to finish the jobs or to set things aside on my own related to the importance that I give them, nobody else.

 

On to my philosophy of being sick... If I can get through it without drugs, I will take it. Rarely will you find me popping pills at every little ache and pain. I find that aches and pains are my body's way of telling me to back off, so if I just change whatever I am doing, they will go away. This works in that area. Even if I wake up with a sore throat or go to sleep with a headache, I will try to figure out the cause and remedy that before I take pills that will just make the pain go away, treating the symptoms and not the cause. This has always worked for me in that same sense, too, until I started teaching. Here is where the serious problem comes in! I get germs that my body either has never seen before and/or has no defenses to tackle, yet I still have to keep trucking through my day-to-day life as if I am perfectly healthy. Not fun. So I take drugs. Then I don't know what the actual cause of the illness was, because I have to ignore it and keep trucking on through life. What do I do then? The sickness will keep coming back and coming back, stronger each time, until it knocks me on my rear end like this one did to me yesterday!!

J.M. Hope