Being Sick

Growing up I was a sickly kid. I was always out of school for some sickness, in elementary school I had constant strep throat till they took my tonsils out, then I had appendicitis and in between I had stuff mostly relating to asthma, allergies or some complication of them. Me and my sisters got some really weird stuff too just to make things interesting. I went to doctors' offices so often that I tested out of high school health with only one day of studying. All my prior studying of the many charts and models that the doctors always had in the examination rooms really paid off.

Anyway, most of the time I wasn't contagious, sometimes I didn't even have symptoms, I just "felt bad". My mom did what she thought was best and let me stay home from school and rest. I did not have the best school career socially speaking and often took advantage of that and acted worse than I felt just to avoid school. In high school, after my freshman year, I decided that I was missing out on life due to being so sick. I decided that being sick was not a good way to avoid things I'd rather not deal with, so I said I would not miss another day of school unless I was showing signs of contagion; throwing up, fever, green snot, that kind of stuff. And overall I stuck to that for the rest of high school.

In fact, I've tried to stick to that as a general rule, life shouldn't stop even if you are sick, unless you are contagious and then you should stay away from people for their own protection. It has been a hard thing to follow this past year since we've moved. As a family, we have been sicker this year than any other year. I don't know if it is the stress of moving, perhaps the house, since it wasn't new already had allergens, or maybe it was the crazy winter, most likely it's a combination of them all. I don't think we've gone more than a month since last July without someone being contagiously sick at our house and last month we all took turns every week. This week it is apparently my turn with a cough and sore throat. I am just plain tired of it. I want to live my life as a healthy person with healthy children and a healthy husband. There is nothing I can think of to do to help it though short of shutting us in a bubble. Of course that isn't exactly practical. I hate telling my kids I can't do something because I feel bad. It's even worse when the kids feel bad. It's just so, so...IRRITATING being sick all the time. I try to keep to our usual routine and believe me, I know how fortunate I am that no one is debilitating sick or truly chronically sick, I grew up with that. But I just wish that we'd get over all this and stay well for a few months together. Ok, gripe over.

**EDITED**

Just so you don't think I'm some sort of super lady (I'm far from it) who can do everything even when I'm sick, I only aspire to not putting my life on hold when sickness happens. My house is a MESS right now, my kids watch embarrassing amounts of tv every day and we've eaten fast food too many times to count this month. I'm really tired of that too.