In a fog...

Today I have felt in a fog. I had come down with a flu-like virus last Saturday that had kept me in bed all weekend and it looked like this morning, I may be in bed again all weekend, except this time, I just couldn't breath. I felt like every time I tried to take a deep breath, something big was laying on my chest squeezing out every last inch of my left lung. I am not use to being sick, especially not two weekends in a row.

Determined that I was going to get to the bottom of why I felt almost as bad as I had last weekend, I tiredly put some clothes on and went back to the urgent care center that I had visited last week. This was the place that had given me 4 prescriptions, one of which changed the way everything tasted, which had been a annoyance all week. Not a place I wanted to spend another Saturday, but I went. I found out that I don't have pneumonia, which is what I had feared, but that the bronchitis is still looming large in my lungs and I have fluid in my ears and sinus passages to boot. After a breathing treatment at the UTC, 3 new prescriptions, and a nap, I feel a bit more like I can breath, literally.

It is weird not getting better immediately. I am used to being well. I am used to healing fairly quickly. The doctor said I need more rest and fluids. I had worked three days this past week. I guess trying to prove to myself that I was indeed invincible. I really didn't think it mattered, because I was on prescriptions and they were going to make me well, like every time in the past.

So I have another Saturday that I have gotten little to nothing done. I am trying hard to focus on rest, but I feel continually like I should be doing something more.

When I was pulling into my garage from the UTC, I got a call. A dear friend was on the other line and I knew as soon as I heard her voice why she was calling. She was calling to let me know that our dog, Scotty, who she had taken in when Elias was 1 because he was allergic, had died. We had not seen him in over a year.  From my sickness and the shock of it, I felt like I was in some sort of dream, like I was watching everything happen outside of myself, like I was feeling and knowing, yet not all at the same time. It was very surreal.

I know that it may seem a silly thing to grieve a dog who has not lived in our home for years, but I do. He truly felt like our first baby, especially in those hard years when we were not able to have children of our own, and he definitely had been part of our family. My friend who has to live with an empty kennel and dog bowls will grieve much more than I will, for sure, so I pray for her. She had loved him well during his life and I never regret giving him over to her care.

Scotty had turned 10 last month. He was only 6 weeks old when we had brought him home so many Aprils ago. I think about how fast time goes and how there will be future calls that will seem more surreal, be more painful, seem too impossible to believe, that someone I love is gone.

The kid we thought we would never have will soon be with us an entire decade and his sister will follow up close behind - the tail end of the promise of family that we never thought to expect. I just feel like I am looking outside of my little bubble of "this is my life" and realizing what a wondrous miracle it really has been.

Of course, it could be all of the medicines coursing through my body!