Response to Sickness

First of all, I want to share this no filter photo of fall. I’m glad I took the picture because I was so exhausted and sick when I took it I totally could not appreciate it. I’ve heard the sun will come out again tomorrow. Can’t wait.

So, back to my real topic.  Sickness.  When you spend about 16 days with a person before they move across the world to marry you, there is a lot you just don’t know about a person.  One of those things is how they deal with sickness.  I’ve been fairly lucky with all the surprises marriage has brought, and the way he deals with sickness is really no exception.

As for my “normal,” I can remember going to the doctor twice between the ages of two and 18, both times for a strep test. My mom’s normal phrase when anything hurt was, “I’m sure you will live.” My sister recently explained to some friends that mom was very nourishing when we were sick, because she let us stay in bed or on the bathroom floor and didn’t make us do any work. She also checks on you at least every other day and will put Gatorade and crackers outside your door if you text and ask for them.
It is important when you get married that you recognize that not everyone does things they way you are used to them being done and anticipate that the other person will naturally have a different “normal” and different expectations.
I had some clue growing up that our way was not the only way. My dad would lay on the bathroom floor moaning and groaning so loudly you could hear him through out the house. Even as I child I assumed that he must have been raised in a home that responded to moaning and groaning, or else why would he keep doing it.  It was such a waste of breath and energy.
And once when one of our newly adopted siblings threw up while watching TV, we got a speech about how some families just throw up where they are, but in the Wright family we throw up in the toilet. I remember imagining that dad’s family probably threw up while watching TV. Not that we always made it to the toilet, but if you missed the toilet you better have had a towel in your hand and been running at neck break speeds towards the toilet. The towel was important. The moment you started feeling ill you were supposed to get a towel and keep it with you, usually on your pillow.
So the other night, after eating Chinese food and putting baby to sleep my stomach started cramping pretty badly. Just in case I went ahead and got my towel headed to the bathroom floor to hang out. As I was heading there, I heard my husband jump into action and remember him saying something about knowing what I needed. I wasn’t in the bathroom long. I threw up fairly quickly and completely and headed back to bed where I was met with an Emergen-C, a stomach settling tea, a fresh glass of water, and a conversation about heading to the hospital. My brain does not equate food poisoning with hospital visits any more than it equates food poisoning with trips to the zoo. Why would you head to either the hospital or zoo after throwing up is beyond me.
But that being said, the combination of those three drinks was magical and I felt great after that and so we tabled the hospital speech for a few days.
A few days after that he got slapped with a nasty cold and wanted to go to the doctor. I don’t have any clue how that works. Do people really call the doctor and ask for an appointment because they have a cold?  He wanted an antibiotic and didn’t understand how the fact that 300 years ago my mom’s family was Dutch has anything to do with his inability to get an antibiotic now. But I swear, those things are connected. We don’t do unnecessary medicine.
I was planning to be flexible and let him call the doctor if he needed to, but he started felling better just in time.

So far, at least from my perspective, we are doing well with our responses to sickness.  I certainly like all the tea he fixes and he seems to like that I gave him a magic Nyquil and sent him to bed early, while I stayed up with the baby.  I have a feeling sometime I am going to have to give in on the going to the doctor thing.  Maybe it is just something he likes to talk about, but I have a feeling, eventually he actually wants to go to the doctor.