They talked about me and prayed over me today in Relief Society (for those not familiar with the Mormon religion, Relief Society is a meeting for just the ladies in a congregation.) When my husband came home from church and told me this, my first reaction was extreme embarrassment. I wasn’t someone important enough or whatever to be prayed over. Once I got past my initial horror enough to speak, I said, “Wait a minute, how would you know?”
Considering Relief Society is a girls meeting, and Doug is most definitely a guy, this was a legitimate question.
“Because they talked about it in Sunday School.” If it would have been possible to sink through the floor, I probably would have. Sunday School is a meeting for both guys and gals, so if you missed the announcement in Relief Society, you could have heard it the second time around in Sunday School. Yay me.
“Were they talking about just me, or everyone?” I squeaked out.
“All of you guys. I guess there has been five cases of ladies getting it in our congregation in the last couple of weeks.” That made me feel much better. Not the fact that there were more people than just me getting sick, but the fact that everyone didn’t just sit around and say how sad they felt that I was sick. For some reason, that thought was just too mortifying. But as part of a group, I was fine.
Of course, fine is a relative term. When you have West Nile Virus, everything’s relative. Now anyone who missed my last blog, I want you to immediately stop reading and first feel extreme guilt that you could ever miss something as important as one of my blogs. Afterall, there are at least two people in this world who make it their very first priority every morning to check to see if the Venerable Hava posted while they weren’t looking. C’mon, join the crowd, do what everyone else is doing. You’re never going to be cool if you don’t.
Now that you are past the guilt part (boy, that didn’t last long) scroll down and read my last blog entry entitled “Irony.” Now you understand why I entitled this blog “WAY too much irony.” This kind of thing happens in movies and books, but apparently happens in Hava’s life too. Be careful what you laugh about–isn’t that some sort of axiom? It oughta be. Maybe I could tradmark it and make millions. Then I really would be laughing, promise.
It all started Friday evening, after a truly horrid day. Doug suggested we go for a walk, so I could get out of the house and stop worrying about the no-good-very-bad-day I had just suffered through. I jumped at the chance, and we left. We left for a jaunt around the block. Now you must know, our “block” is actually much bigger than a standard city block, and I’m usually pretty tired by time we make it all the way around it. But this time, about 3/4′s of the way done, I started to feel really tired, much more than I usually feel. All waitresses and cashiers will know what I’m talking about: I had that feeling that you get when you’ve finished a shift where you have been standing on your feet for 8-10 hours and your legs just ache. At first, I ignored it. After all, I had had a long day (which hadn’t included a whole lot of standing, actually) and this was a long walk, and maybe it was just a combination of those factors.
Farther down the sidewalk, the ache had intensified, and it had spread up past my thighs into my hips. It felt like I had been beat with a tire iron, and I couldn’t figure out what on earth was going on. “Doug, I am really tired. I don’t know why.” Rounding the last corner, the house in sight, my whole body was aching all over like I had been beat repeatedly with the tire iron. By time Doug got the front door open, I was light-headed and a bit disoriented. I knew where I was, but the world seemed just a little off-kilter. The pain was overwhelming. My whole body ached–my teeth, the hairs on my head, my bones–heck, I’m sure my toenails were causing me pain. I hadn’t hurt like this since I had the flu a couple of years ago. I wouldn’t say the pain was stronger than that bout of sickness, but it certainly was on par with it. I got the chills and couldn’t seem to warm up. I was under blankets (Doug was wonderful just as all husbands should be, and he helped me to the bedroom, helped me get in bed–all those things wonderful hubbys should do. I have never been so grateful for my spouse as I was that night) and Doug was rubbing my arms and my back while partially covering my body with his. It was warm in the house, and yet the shaking/teeth chattering/chills continued.
I asked Doug for some water, because my throat ached so bad. He got some and brought it back. I would start to get warm, then take a drink and instantly start chattering again. I finally got it through my befuddled brain that the water was cold, and was the cause of the cold boughts. I stopped drinking but it still took a while to warm up.
As all grown-up independent women do who are out on their own, I called my mom. I do not know why, but mothers can always make you feel better, even if they’re half a world away. My mom was only a half a state away, but might as well have been a half a world away. In Idaho, a half a state is quite a distance. No fear though, she still made me feel better. She told me all the things mothers are supposed to tell their sick children, and ended by suggesting that I take a warm bath. My teeth were still chattering at this point, and I was definitely up for any ideas to warm up. Doug helped me out of bed (I couldn’t even sit up without his help at this point, let alone walk across the room. Are you kidding me? I would have considered walking to the kitchen at that point to be an Olympic event) and helped me into the tub. After I warmed up enough to take a thermometer in the mouth (you can’t have your temp taken if your teeth are chattering, FYI) we found out I was registering at 100.4. No wonder I felt so darn awful crappy.
Doug helped me out of the tub and back into bed. He gave me some Tylenol PM and I drifted off to sleep. I woke up later–I’m not sure what time it was, I was completely disoriented–and all I could think was how hot it was. I stumbled out of bed and threw the bedroom window open to let the evening breeze in. I laid back down and my last thought was, “I don’t want to lay here–my pillow is covered in sweat!” I don’t think I stayed awake long enough to even move my head to a different spot on the pillow; if I did stay awake that long, I don’t remember it. Doug says he came in later and felt me–he said I was on fire. He said I had all of the covers off, the window was open, and I was burning up. I believe it.
I woke up Saturday morning feeling marginally better. At least I no longer felt frozen to the core or in the fires of Hades. I stumbled to the doorway of my husband’s office. “You wanta take a shower?” I mumbled. For some reason, when I’m sick, my tongue is the first thing to go. I can never talk clearly when I’m sick. Luckily, Doug has had 5 years of practice to understand my mumbling, and didn’t even hesitate. “Yeah, let’s go.”
I got as far as shampooing my hair and getting it out, when I started to feel very light-headed. “Dang it!” I thought. When I’m sick, my body seems to deal with it by having me pass out in the shower. I don’t know why I do this, but once or twice every six months or so, I’ll pass out in the shower. The first time this happened, Doug flipped out. He was sure I was dying. Now, he just calmly shuts the water off, helps me sit down on the floor of the shower, gets a towel off the towel rack for me and draps it around my shoulders, and leaves to get ready for the day. I sit on the floor of the tub until the world comes back from the gray/black place it had been hiding at, and it stops spinning dangerously, and then I can stand up. Until the world comes back and stops spinning though, don’t even bother with trying to move me. It won’t work. It’s my body’s way of saying, “Stop, you need to stop right now, you’re sick.” I listened to it, and went back to bed.
I spent most of the day either sleeping or whining and complaining to my hubby about how sick I felt. The earlier, “I feel a little bit better today” thought was completely gone, replaced by, “If I died, I wouldn’t be in nearly as much pain.” The meanie he is, Doug wouldn’t kill me, no matter how I begged. I reminded him about the high life insurance policy we have on me, and he reminded me that wouldn’t do him a bit of good if he was rotting in prison. Sheesh, you can’t even buy loyalty these days.
When the people in the ward found out I had West Nile, the food started coming. Fan of the Mormon religion or not, you have to admit they have the “Sick Person Food Delivery System” down pat. Doug told me that since I was supposed to be cooking dinner, he “guessed” it counted that although I didn’t cook, I was the person responsible for the food showing up. I told him that was very nice of him to say, as we dug into our green salad, homemade spaghetti, oatmeal bread, and cake for dessert. Heck, if we got to eat this nice when I was sick, perhaps I ought to be sick all the time. It almost made up for the 101.6 temperature I was running. Almost.
I slept in this morning (as Primary Pres, you can bet your bottom dollar I don’t spend much time sleeping on Sunday mornings) and enjoyed a bit of time lazing about in bed. I got up and took a shower (no passing out this time, which is good, because Doug was gone to church and wouldn’t have been here to catch me) and felt almost human.
I tell you what though, no more laughing at people who have West Nile. The irony has become too much, even for me. 
Havs
Who is just happy to be alive…
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