I am one of those people who never get sick. Between February 1998 and October 2007 I took a grand total of one sick day at work, and just generally felt well.
I attributed it to a few things...sleep (I slept at least eight hours, and often more), frequent exercise, fairly low stress and antioxidant supplements.
I still take antioxidant supplements.
Do you see where this is going?
So, anyway, I WAS one of those people who never get sick. Since J's birth I have had every imaginable ache and pain, from an unshakeable sore throat to blood-streaked phlegm (lovely) to a flare-up of osteoarthritis that I had thought was never to return.
And pinkeye. Who the hell over the age of eighteen gets pinkeye? (Knocked Up characters notwithstanding.)
Previously, with my husband and I as the only nodes of the germ ecosystem, illnesses attached themselves to one node -- his. He could be receiving the Rite of Extreme Unction for cholera and I'd be merrily traipsing off to go be healthy somewhere.
But now I find that my immune response is weakened. It's not any one thing -- I do sleep fairly well, I don't have unmanageable stress, I exercise two days a week or so -- but the paring away from where I used to be healthwise to where I am now...this death by paper cuts...has taken its toll.
Knock on wood, J has made it thus far with only a few days of gunky sniffles; no scary fever or ear infections yet. Even the pinkeye passed her by -- her, the most logical recipient as far as I could tell.
The end result of all this, besides a near-constant feeling that my body is dying, curling off in dry strips and blowing away, is that I have lost any sense of arrogance about my former strapping wellness.
As a new mother, the list of things about which I can be smug is woefully short. There just went another line item.
No comments:
Post a Comment