In Sickness and in Health

We don’t really get sick. Considering the husband only took six days off for the pursuit of fun last year, it would be really daft to take more days off poorly than we take off in the pursuit of happiness, so we just don’t really do it.

When the husband started having seizures a little over three years ago, I stopped everything so that he could discharge himself from hospital and have 24/7 care at home, because he couldn’t stand the idea of stopping work, and he couldn’t work in the hospital. He did have to slow down; he had to slow down quite a lot, because it took him about double the time he was used to taking, simply to get anything done, what with the seizures and sorting out the meds, and what with trips to hospitals, and public transport and whatnot, but he didn’t really take time off sick.

That’s why bugs and colds, and all those little niggles are such a colossal pain in the backside. We simply refuse to be laid low by them. We moan and groan about them, we take paracetamol and liver salts, and, when it’s me, I tend to take duvet days, and work in bed, but the husband simply sits at his desk, as usual, and keeps going; he more-or-less refuses to be ill.

The one exception to this, for me, at least, used to be the migraine. I laugh about other people and their migraines. I laugh when I read a FaceBook status or a tweet declaring that the person posting the status or the tweet has got a migraine, because, frankly, if I have a migraine, I cannot look at a computer screen, let alone read one, and I certainly can’t type... I can’t see my fingers for heaven’s sake. A headache is a headache, take something and get on with it; a migraine really isn’t.

Keeping my fingers, metaphorically, crossed while I type this, my migraines appear to be on the wane. Huzzah.

On the other hand, the World seems to be a less healthy place than ever, and we are both voiceless, aching and pathetic with disturbingly heavy head colds. We are sucking lozenges, disposing of our hankies in the most hygienic manner possible and scarfing down a good deal of tomato and, separately of course, good old fashioned chicken soup.

If you treat a cold it’ll last a week and if you don’t it’ll be gone in seven days. In the meantime I’m just off to cough up half a lung, if you’ll excuse  me, and then it’s back to work on the last bit of this book, while the husband begins work on his next.

It never stops, does it?