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
I have the same problem with staying in bed when sick. Too much guilt to do so. Also, sometimes I got molested while sick in bed, so I figure that’s got to be part of the problem.
Goodness, you really have been busy! I won’t tell you to slow down cause then you’d speed up just because I told you what to do.
I/we do the cleaning thing also. We finally realized its because we’re always afraid we’ll die and wouldnt want anyone coming in and thinking us slobs. To make it worse we throw out any incriminating writings or stuff that would advertise our DID or heck, even that we have sexual thoughts/feelings (so out go the dildos). Cannot begin to tell you how much stuff we’ve had to replace over the years. We’re weird lol.
(ps…if the dildo/sex mention is triggering to anyone please edit that out).
Annie -
First off I laughed at the dildo thing but really, God forbid anyone should know we have sexual urges. LOL. Even in death we still so much want to be thought of as “good girls” and a “good girl” doesn’t have sex even if it’s with herself. Like we’d even know the expressions on the faces of friends and family as they poured through our things but we still worry. I can see it now, Oh Lord, I sooo thought Austin was “going to heaven” but NOW I’m not so sure. She’s not so innocent as she appears to be.
I figure if I’m going to kick the bucket I’m sure as hell not cleaning. At that point my apartment is no longer my problem.
Really though, when I die I want something that says the real Austin was here. If it means people knowing I have “paraphernalia” then so be it. They’ll say about me, Austin was a clown, an artist and a pervert but they will know I was here.
The problem w/ being sick and going to the hospital is having to come back to people that called themselves being helpful, cleaned and found things you really just didn’t want found yet. The problem w/ having such items is having to look the person in the eye that found it. So see Annie, death isn’t the problem, it’s life and nosy/helpful people.
Austin
Luckily we’re rarely sick and havent had to have those helpful people come around. But you’ve made a good point about the helpful people and I’m going to try and convince the ones here who fear the most and declutter our lives to remember that. Everyone tells me I won’t know what people think of me once I’m dead so why bother “purifying” my life for them.
I’m glad you laughed! And I love that puppy!
I do so enjoy reading here and do every day! Thank you for allowing me to do so.
That reminds me – I need to “hide” certain evidence before I go into labor. Since my in-laws will be camping out at my house to keep my daughter. Luckily some of it is still packed away in mis-labelled boxes. Couldn’t have the movers knowing what I was hiding. Someday I’ll open a box labelled “Kitchen dishes” and go “Ohhhh THOSE aren’t kitchen dishes.”
I’m the same way about cleaning – I can not relax until everything is done. Some day I might just get everything done……
Oh my God! And here I was all whining about my little shitty virus! Man, I hope those lips don’t go blue again. Sending good health vibes your way.
I like to wear blue but not suffocating blue. I like options and that blue doesn’t go with much other than decomp gray.
I went down hill rather quickly, it wasn’t good. I couldn’t keep my oxygen level up at all. Ten liters of oxygen and I stayed at 89%. Not good at all but I’m feeling much better…I’m back to deep honey brown. From time to time I get pale but that’s only when I walk into the kitchen and see my roommate doing something excessively unsanitary.