Tag: family

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The Little Things

Lisa

I’m still sick. The current thought is that I’m just dealing with significant leftover inflammation from the severe infection that I had, and that I’m not contagious, just still feeling kind of miserable. I’m taking anti-inflammatory medication round the clock and it’s mostly keeping the pain in check and hopefully also helping to decrease the levels of inflammation in my throat. I’m back at work, though struggling a bit, since the inflammation has left me prone to coughing and bronchospasm, particularly when I talk – a challenge since I talk on the phone for a living!

But these many weeks of illness (I’ve been sick since July 2nd) have left me grateful for some little things, and I wanted to share a few of those here.

  1. The relief of a cold popsicle on my sore and inflamed throat. I’ve been going through a lot of popsicles, not normally a staple in my diet, and one memory of these stands out. It was about 4 am at the hospital and a very apologetic nurse had just told me she couldn’t give me any pain killers until I saw the doctor. She very kindly offered me a popsicle for my throat and a warm blanket for my body. Nothing has tasted so good as that simple peach flavored popsicle after a long night of waiting for care.
  2. I’m grateful for a family who has been checking in on me and offering help as needed
  3. I’m grateful that despite missing a bunch of work, and being out of paid sick time, my paycheque was still enough to cover my rent and a few small bills, and that the next paycheque will let me catch up the other things
  4. I’m grateful for a freezer full of food so that a small paycheque doesn’t mean I have to choose between food and rent.
  5. And I’m grateful for audiobooks and podcasts that have kept me company during the long hours I’ve spent in bed this month, trying to rest and recover.
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Hopeful

Lisa

Still over here recovering from the plague that was bacterial tonsillitis plus a viral infection of some sort. I finished antibiotics this morning, and my throat is mostly not sore anymore, but I’ve got a lovely lingering dry cough, that is particularly activated when I talk, which is a problem, since as both a counselor and a telehealth nurse, I talk for a living. I tried to go back to work yesterday and only lasted about four hours before I’d coughed so much that my throat felt sore again.

I had a pre-booked follow up to my emergency room visit with my family doctor this morning, and she prescribed an inhaler to help with the cough and told me to take today to use the inhaler regularly, and then try and return to work tomorrow. So that’s the plan. One more day of resting and medicating, then hopefully back to regularly scheduled programming!

Every stage of this silly illness has had moments of despair and moments of hope. The first two doctors I saw, who dismissed my symptoms left me feeling rather despairing, as I dealt with the intense pain from the throat infection. The third doctor who took me seriously and ran some more tests gave me hope. The emergency room nurses, who were all so kind, despite being in the midst of a busy night shift during Stampede gave me hope – one was so apologetic that she couldn’t give me pain meds that she offered and found me a popsicle for my aching throat! The fast action of the steroid that they gave me in the emergency room gave me hope as I found relief from pain for the first time in a week. And the doctor today, who told me in her own way that I wasn’t crazy, I was really very sick, and has put in some referrals to hopefully prevent this from happening again in the future, and then listened when I said a particular inhaler wouldn’t work because it aggravates my anxiety and depression, and found an alternative that will work just as well – that gave me hope too.

In a season that has felt hard, where I’m dealing with a lot of life transitions and stressors, and generally just feel a bit out of control, the glimmers of hope are so good for me to notice. And today, maybe for the first time this week, since I’ve still been feeling crummy, and coughing near constantly, I feel hope.

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Little Wins That Add Up

Lisa

I’ll be the first to admit that this journey of revamping how I handle my finances, and trying to save money, is well… painful. I recently sent my brother a meme that was captioned, “I think the universe knew that I’d be too bloody powerful if I could do math.” Math scares me, and money is one of those things that I’ve always found deeply stressful. Like, it makes me cry or want to avoid it stressful. Put all of those things together and anything that involves money or financial contracts feels highly intimidating to me, and like the really stressful kind of adulting that I CAN do, but I never WANT to do. I’ve been doing a lot of that kind of adulting lately, while navigating the beginning stages of a career transition, and the associated costs of registration in a new profession, and so on. All that to say, my stress level in that area has been high, and my wanting to tackle it has been low.

I’m working on it, though, and today I went shopping for a new cell phone plan with my brother. I’ve stayed with the same phone carrier for over a decade, because I just hate negotiating and change that much. Conversely, he’s gotten good at that particular task, and offered to help me. So I basically tagged along as we toured the mall, stopping at the various cell phone kiosks, while he asked some basic questions and got some quotes for a plan where I’ll bring my own phone, since my current iphone is not yet in need of replacement.

After all that, we settled on a prepaid plan option that is saving me roughly $40/month over what I was paying with my longtime service provider. It means I have less data (but still more than I use in any one month), but has the upside of making my phone usable for the occasions every year or two where I travel to the United States to spend time with friends. When we finished shopping, we sat in the food court and talked through a couple other big decisions I have on my plate right now financially, and then I came home and took some action steps based on our conversation.

It was that kind of day – an adulting kind of day – but I feel accomplished, and like this win, though small to medium in the grand scheme of my financial situation, and like the other bits and bobs I accomplished today, and the like the reading project I wrote about in my last post, are wins that might actually add up to meaningful change, and that tiny bit of light and hope in the midst of a challenging situation feels amazing today.