Dear friends and loved ones

I got sick the week leading up to King’s Day (27 April). So ill that I dreaded the long nights and prayed for the morning. My pillow was propped up like they do in hospital beds. The throat lozenges, water, paracetamol, nasal spray, cough mixture and tissues were all at hand.

And my poor husband was huffing around the house because he was on speed dial. Unfortunately, his phone kept ringing, and some lunatic lined up a firing squad of demands. Now I wonder who that was.

In the hours leading up to the worst night

I was exhausted. I couldn’t even speak. Continually coughing makes you feel like you’ve just run a marathon. You feel out of breath, tired and slightly confused.

The confusion part arises because you cough so hard that you fart at the same time. You whip around and think, did I do that? Yes, dear, you did. Now what do you call that? The joys of getting older?

More on that at a later date. No one talks about these things, which is rather annoying. Because, I mean, it would be nice to know. I’ve heard that, at some age, it’s even a good idea to go for fart walks after dinner. But as I said, we’ll leave that for another day.

This all leads up to lesson number one.

If you find yourself in the company of other people, and you feel an uncontrollable cough coming on, shuffle to another room. As fast as possible. Preferably a toilet. Honestly, as I mentioned before, you are not in control of your body at this point.

As I lay in my home hospital bed that night, afraid to speak or breathe in fear that I would cough again, I remembered Vicks vapour rub. I speed-dialled my husband, who was lying next to me and said, ‘I need Vicks now.’ Of course, we didn’t have any.

The reason I remember Vicks is that my father ALWAYS kept a bottle in his toiletry bag.

So I guess this is lesson number two.

Always pay attention to what your parents have on hand. Like sweets and chocolates in a handbag and Vicks vapour rub in their toiletry bag.

I would have killed for a bottle of Vicks but, alas, had to enter the torture chamber of night without one. Guess who wasn’t paying attention?

In the early morning after the worst night.

My jaw cracked open. You know when you crack your neck and some bones go back into place. Yes, that happened to my jaw. A big crack. And not just that. My ears were blocked. Every time I breathed, I heard a crackling sound in the echoes of my head.

I tried meditation to calm myself. When I breathed, at the height of my breath, I was startled by a hissing in the chest. I don’t think I read about crackling and hissing in the meditation journal. So I assumed perhaps it best to leave it at that.

Mid-morning, my husband burst through the door.

With a huge grin, he said, ‘Even when you are sick, you look so beautiful. Ey, and you look at me with such loving eyes.’

Is this what you call love, or did this man go heavy on the rum ‘n raisin puffs for breakfast?

Luckily for him, I didn’t want to speak. Whenever I opened my mouth and the air went down my passageways, it triggered a cough. Living in fear of coughing is no way to live. When I considered how to overcome this situation, I realised that the first step was acceptance, not avoidance.

Fully medicated and slightly dizzy, I accepted that I was sick. I accepted that I may cough, and I couldn’t avoid it. And I accepted that it may be painful, and I couldn’t avoid that either.

I went back to bed convinced that I had turned a corner.

‘I am on the mend’, I told myself. ‘I am healthy, I am strong. I am healthy. I am strong.’

When I woke up, I was still sick. The difference is I wasn’t afraid to cough. The cough still showed up with the occasional fart, but it was less intense and not as painful as I first imagined. The tricky little thing about fear is that it distorts perception. It makes a hill look like a mountain and a dip resembles a valley.

If you’re going through something right now, and you feel exhausted, ask yourself what you’re afraid of. If you need to make a list, write it down. That in itself eliminates the avoidance.

Now accept where you are without the guilt, blame, or shame.

And then buckle up, sugar plum. It doesn’t matter whether you’re on the plateau of a hill or in the shadows of a dip, you still have to move. PAST. THROUGH. UP.

Maybe you’ll cough, fart and splatter your way through it, but who cares. Messy action is better than no action.

Accept where you are right now.

Get clear on what you’re really afraid of. (I wasn’t afraid of coughing, I was afraid of the pain.) Reframe your thinking based on that clarity. (Are you facing a few hurdles down the straight or packing your survival kit for a climb?)

Take action.

You can do it. We can do it.

If you know someone who needs a little pick me up and would find this valuable, please hit the share button :)

With gentleness, grace, and joy (because joy always comes in the morning)

Lisa Marie