‘MUM, wait till you see what I’m giving you for Valentines Day!’ my son exclaimed excitedly.
I wondered what it would be. I had a germ of an idea. For Christmas he gave me a nasty virus and for my birthday, vomiting and diarrhoea! Perhaps he will lovingly bestow head lice or chicken pox on me as his Valentine‘s gift? My son is very thoughtful that way; he always shares his millions of little germs with his mummy, especially over school holidays and special occasions. I haven’t spent a holiday period or birthday since he started school without some malady brought home courtesy of him and his little germ-invested friends.
I lost my immune system years ago, I think I left it on a bus around the same time my son started nursery. I’m the Victoria Beckham of viruses, a positive germ-fashionista, I appear to always be sporting the very latest virus kindly supplied by my six year old son. These days, the common greeting I receive from friends and family is the exclamation: ’Are you sick again?’ quickly followed by: ‘Are you taking any vitamins?’
I take so many vitamins that I began to suspect they were making me ill. I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired. It’s got to the stage where I loathe to make any arrangements for social gatherings, hairdressing appointments, the dentist, as I know I will be felled by the next nasty virus lying in wait to ambush me, forcing me to cancel my plans.
My son and I wash our hands immediately on entering the house no matter where we’ve been, professionals insist this is the way to cut down on picking up colds etcetera, but it makes no difference, we are both successfully infiltrated by the most unpleasant germs. These germs languish in us for as long as is physically possible like house guests who have outstayed their welcome. My husband on the other hand is rarely ill, he simply cannot understand how I suffer constant sickness, though it was interesting to see over Christmas when he did the school run twice, he was forced to take a day off work due to illness. I rest my case; school is a veritable bug-fest!
I spend most of my time in the doctor’s surgery with either myself or my son; sometimes I book us a double appointment. I dread going there because firstly, I visit so often I fear the doctor suspects I’m a hypochondriac, and secondly every time I go in I come out with a new virus. If I sit beside someone and they begin sneezing and coughing I surreptitiously try to move away, then I spend the whole time trying not to breathe in case I inhale a mutating bug.
The awful thing about illness is how some people love to share the most intimate of details. I have stopped giving people a run down on my symptoms when they casually ask: ‘How are you?’ I have quickly cottoned on that nobody really wants to know!
‘Any fitter and I couldn’t stick it! I now reply as I crawl off to lie down in a darkened room. Let’s face it there is nothing as bad as getting the low down on people’s aches and pains. The elderly in particular can become obsessed with their afflictions and go into great detail of every pain, bowel movement and milligram of tablet they ingest. Illness-dissecting can become a favourite hobby for people, some get wrapped up in an illness until it becomes almost like an identity for them.
Many elderly people suffer serious illness not just because of their age but because they are lonely and isolated. In her book, The Heart Speaks, cardiologist Mimi Guarneri reveals that the heart is a much more complex organ than she was taught, it possess intelligence, memory and decision-making abilities independent from the mind. Through her patients she discovered that healing starts with human connection and that a heart can be ’broken’ as much by loneliness and depression than by high cholesterol and high blood pressure. This doctor states that the ’I’ in illness is isolation and the crucial letters in wellness are ‘we’.
To maintain wellness we need a sense of purpose, and I am very lucky to have that in my husband and son. I saw my father evaporate in front of my eyes when his 58 year marriage to my mother ceased with her death, he’d never had a day’s illness in his life before, but when the purpose and identity her love gave him was no longer there, part of him died with her.
I may be riddled with germs and plagued by temporary illnesses, but in truth I don’t really mind because I get them from my little purpose in life, my son, he passes them on through his constant cuddles and kisses, I look upon them as love bugs.
On Valentine’s Day we’ll sit down to a family meal to celebrate the love that lives in abundance in our home. I’ll cook my family’s favourite foods, fish fingers for my son, a steak for my husband and a light antibiotic buffet for myself as my son couldn’t wait until February 14 to give me his surprise, I’ve already got it, a throat infection!
Happy Valentine’s Day!