February 12

It was another week of sickness. We did make it to Sarah’s birthday party and that went well but I was wiped out afterward and had a couple more very hard days. Sarah had a swollen cheek which the doctor thinks was from biting it accidentally while eating, as we all have done at one time or another, and then re-biting it accidentally while it was swollen and then it got infected. So she is on antibiotics for the third time in the last couple of months and I’m feeling rather discouraged about her internal system being set-back quite a bit from whatever progress we had made. It takes a long time of being on probiotics to make up for one round of antibiotics. The antibiotics have already notably gotten her regular digestive rhythm a bit out of whack. Anyway, we were all home a lot and I rested a lot and let the girls have unlimited screen time. I can’t remember another time in my life when I have been so sick for so long. It has felt brutal and I feel physically, mentally, and emotionally worn out. I am slowly on the mend though and am able to be up and about and functioning in my life a bit. I even was able to go to DC Saturday-Sunday to hang out with friends in my bookless-meetless group. We used to be part of a book group and then it stopped working for us to read books in a coordinated fashion and then it stopped working for us to meet regularly at all and people now live all over. Every once in a while we all meet in DC and even though I was at low ebb it was still wonderful to be part of it.

Truth be told, as soon as I walked in the door from my trip and hugged Carl I burst into big sobs. I felt so overwhelmed by the idea of re-entering life and needing to do even the smallest things to prepare the girls for school tomorrow. I just wanted to crawl into bed. After several minutes of deep crying (and deep coughing) I felt much clearer and could even consider functioning without it seeming totally overwhelming.

Anyway, I am feeling relatively good now, all things considered. Still sick, but so much better than before. Still daunted by all that has piled up in the wake of my being out of commission for so many days. But I feel more like myself than I have in a couple of weeks, so that is something.

I hope that all of you are well.