High fever, still trying to break it and keep it broken. My oxygen level is still down but my lips aren’t blue anymore. I’m physically tired but that doesn’t stop me from getting up and cleaning like a fiend. Why? Why do I feel so useless when I’m sick? Why can’t I just lay down and recuperate like a normal person? Take some soup, hit the sheets, complain and mean it? Nope, I’m up running the sweeper, dusting, doing laundry, cooking meals. I wasn’t doing that stuff before I was sick. Heck, all housework pretty much stopped when Maureen (our Buffer) cut out. I’ve been too depressed to really cook. I mostly did lunch meat sandwiches and other fast foods I didn’t have to think about. But you let me get sick, you ask me to lay down in bed and suddenly I’m swept with the need, no not need…I’m overtaken by the guilt of being unproductive.
I’ve been home from the hospital a few days now. In the last few days I’ve done 6 loads of laundry. Some of them were winter clothes that got re-washed and stored, then there were blankets, towels and stuff like that. I dusted (which I hardly ever do) I took my sweeper apart and cleaned it. I cleaned the office. For the love of Pete I cleaned the office. I can actually see the wood on my desk top. I’d forgotten what it looks like. Forgive me but I even moved a chair from the bedroom to the living room.
It didn’t matter that my knees were killing me or that sleep doesn’t come easily because physical pain keeps me awake. Forget that my hips grind as loudly as my knees right in sync with my tail bone and my neck. (I need a new skeleton, one not given to arthritis.) I just couldn’t bring myself to lay down and do nothing. Something about being sick makes me feel useless. As soon as this bought of pneumonia is gone the house will go down hill again. As soon as my lungs function at their regular depleted capacity the dust will build, the office will be a disaster zone and I won’t care if there’s one clean towel in the house. But for now, I care. I’m thrown by this sudden need to be productive at any cost.
Be Productive
Tuesday, April 01, 2008-4:01AM EST
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