In Recovery

Sorry I've been essentially silent the last few weeks. We did a serious reorganization of the entire house, moving all desks into a central office area, making the former den into an actual living room that means that people don't have to watch TV in the middle of what amounts to two other people's office space, and there are actual doors that can be closed off to separate the living area of the house from the working area of the house.

Now this does put us at a bit of a disadvantage of that when any of us are on the phone for business or whatever, anyone can hear it. Also that all of us have tendency to talk to ourselves and our computers and, in some cases, our characters, while working. This can result in literally five different conversations going on in the same room at the same time at various volume levels, on top of calling out across the room to each other. So it can get kind of noisy. I have my own window now, though, with a lovely view of the woody part of our front yard, and I get to watch squirrels when I don't have anything else to do.

Which, admittedly, is not often.

Lona and I have the front bedroom now, filled with our bookcases, a big overstuffed chair, and our california king sized bed (oh so very comfy), Nyx has her own room now - the one the 3 of us used to share. So now there is a definite line of demarkation and everyone has their own little territories, which I admit that the wolf in me appreciates very much.

But, the reason that the title of this post is "in recovery," is that in the midst of all this moving, I started getting sick. But this was not a normal cold. This was not a "push through what we're doing and then sleep for the next few days and be fine" cold like I've had many other times....This was a chest cold, and a real pain of one, too. For the first few days after the move I couldn't sleep lying down....or sitting up. I had to prop myself on the edge of the recliner in the living room, rocked forward, legs crossed indian style under me, because it was the one position in which I could breathe for a few minutes in between chest-wracking coughs.

My nose never got stuffed up, but I got what had to have been a fever of over 100 that came and went over several days while I coughed and my chest rattled with every breath. Nyx sat up with me one night and we watched Avatar in the middle of the night - it was on. :P So we watched it. I appreciated the company, but I wasn't doing all that well. I only vaguely remember that night now, and it was less than a week ago.

I dosed constantly on naturopathics, as well as Nyquil and Dayquil and Mucinex, trying to rid myself of the stuff that was filling my chest. I fought to breathe, and ended up having to use my asthma inhaler when the coughing and choking would set off an exertion asthma attack on top of my already fighting to breathe. There were several times over the week or so that I was this sick that I considered asking to be driven to the emergency room...but my fear of hospitals and my dislike of the crap they put people through won out, and I worked through it.

Even now, I'm still coughing and my chest still rattles a bit when I breathe. I wake up in the middle of the night and have to sit up very quickly and cough in order to breathe, and for some reason I can't lie on my right side or my stomach without coughing, but I'm fairly ok on my left side.  However, the fever is long gone and my body is back to working mostly the way it's supposed to. I lost several pounds over the week I was sick just by virtue of not eating regularly. Or...at all, really. I was kind of living off pills and water.

I'm hoping I can keep the weight off - every little bit helps. If I wasn't so heavy I wouldn't have so many other health problems, so my focus is currently on my health. I want to get up to riding my bike regularly, and get myself in a  better physical place. If nothing else, this chest cold nightmare just epitomized all the reasons I need to be healthy. So here I go, once again, trying to take care of myself. Go me. :P

But yes, for now, I'm still technically in recovery from the chest cold, and I'm dealing with exhaustion as I recover from what I'm starting to think was mild pneumonia rather than a simple chest cold - I got it much worse than Lona did, and we got sick at the same time. She's barely coughing now, and I'm still coughing regularly enough that movies have to be paused to wait for me to recover.   ( - . - )  It's frustrating, and annoying, and makes me feel rather useless...add to this that my car has died and I don't have the funds to fix it at the moment, and I start feeling very trapped. By my body, by my lack of car and therefore ability to help the house....It hasn't really been an easy couple of weeks.

However, I refuse to lose my positive. Things will get better - I KNOW they will. I just have to let it happen. And with that, I leave you until my next update...or until I have the time and focus to actually write out something meaningful. :P