Tales from the Sickbed

Hello dear chickens and roosters (a special nod to my dear uncle Loz right there... pity your team sucks), I am most pleased to inform you that my rate of posting will be increasing due to (I am less pleased to inform you) another bout of Caitlin's Mystery Illness Adventures.

Seriously, if life were a lucky dip I would be picking up all the packages filled with pathogens, and not even the interesting ones.

I know it's not that bad, I mean it's just a case of letting myself get run down - flu followed by meningitis followed by whooping cough followed by whatever I have now (nausea, dehydration and crazy low blood pressure) is not terminal cancer, and for that I am very grateful, but HONESTLY. I am bored of being sick.

Do you remember when you were a kid and taking a day off school for being sick somehow made you a bit special or something? You got to watch tv and read and the next day when you came back everyone would ask after you and make sure you were okay. That seems so far removed from what I've been repeatedly experiencing over the last couple of months, which is being exhausted, missing out on all sorts of work, social, and most importantly musical commitments, watching awful mind-numbingly boring television and trying to find a good book to read.

But it's a learning experience, isn't it? That which does not kill us makes us stronger... or whatever.

THINGS I HAVE LEARNED FROM BEING SICK:

• Orange Gatorade sucks. Full effing stop. I shall never drink it again as long as I live, I don't care how it replenishes my electrolytes.
• Electrolytes have less to do with the Large Hadron Collider and more to do with fluid retention than I thought. Disappointing.
• Trying to perform a week long run of a musical with Whooping Cough is pretty much the opposite of a good time.
• Don't watch the news right before going to sleep when you're not sleeping well. You'll wake up at 4am and not be able to get back to sleep for thinking about escaped double murderers (Sydneysiders know what I mean...)
• Having a boyfriend with the immune system of the Winged Victory is really very good. My Roman has never been immunised against anything, and has not got one of the diseases I've had despite being perfectly happy to sleep beside me whilst I'm coughing/feverish/vomiting. What a trooper.
• My family are wonderful. That includes Roman, but also extends to my Mum and Dad, and Andrew and Lilly. Special mention goes to Lil for getting me a sick-bowl. Champion.

I've been very seriously contemplating how things got this way - how I've managed to make myself sick five weeks out of the last six - and I realise that I need a serious lifestyle re-arrangement. Details of said lifestyle rearrangement will no doubt follow, as soon as I've figured them out...