Day Fifty: Is Being Healthy Making Me Sick?

There is nothing quite like waking up in the morning and feeling perfectly fine, and two hours later being freezing, shaking, and nauseous. To make the experience better, there is also nothing like barfing in a public restroom. And if that's fun, then it's absolutely a blast to have to stop the car at the end of your street and open the door and ralph on the street, and your hair, as someone walks by walking their dog.

Needless to say, I did not have the most epic of Mondays.

I came home and slept for three hours, ate a piece of toast, went back to bed for another hour, ate some fruit, and sat around until dinner. So far, so good.

But for someone who doesn't get sick more than a bad cold twice a year, I've been feeling pretty crappy lately. It's only a month and a half into the year, and I've already used two and a half of my sick days. Fantastic. But it makes me a little worried. What have I been doing lately that's been making me so sick? This week, I've been really watching what I eat, so I'm thinking that maybe it's making my immune system a little weaker. Although the logic may not make sense, if I'm eating healthier but not eating well, I might not be giving myself any vitamins I need. A chocolate chip cookie might not be healthy, but it's giving me vitamin C from the orange zest, at least.

This isn't the first time this has happened to me. Last time I got pretty sick, I was on another health kick, just before Christmas. Naturally, I gave up my no-sugar kick at the holidays when fudge and cookies filled the house and I wanted to actually enjoy my holidays, so I put the health-kick on hold. But why everytime I eat healthy do I get un-healthy? Am I doing something wrong?

Day Twenty-Five: What's That? I'm Bleeding From the Eyeballs? Oh No, I'm Fine, Really...

I woke up this morning at 2 A.M. unable to breathe through a snotty, stuffy film that sealed thousands of germs inside my head. As I laid there staring at the inside of my eyelids and concentrating on my labored nose-wheezing, I tried not to think about getting up for work in four hours. So when my Ipod tinkled happily that 6:15 had arrived, I angrily pulled myself out of bed and contemplated the possibilities: go in, try to get through the day, and leave if I had to. After all, I had to go in early all this week to prepare for guests that arrived before office hours. So I popped a thermometer in my mouth for the hell of it (95.5...so my thermometer is broken. That's definitely bordering hypothermia.), pulled myself through the shower, ate a tasteless bowl of cereal, scraped off my car, and drove drowsily to work. After setting my car's internal temperature to a cozy ninety degrees, I felt just warm enough.

After I arrived at work and completed my early-morning activities, it was just about 8:30 when people began to arrive. When my co-worker saw me, she told me to go home. I didn't put up much of a fight. I called my boss, collected my purse and my box of tissues, and drove home. I pulled on my pink pajama pants and a hoodie and buried myself in bed until 11:30. Now, after being fed and medicated, I'm somewhat energetic, and bored. It's now that I'm pondering the fact that I am either slightly ADD, or becoming a workaholic. And I'm kind of a bad patient.

When I'm sick, I'll be happy to fill my person with as much medication as I can to make myself feel better without endangering my health further. I try with earnest to drink water all day, but I usually forget or can't be bothered about three glasses in and six trips to the bathroom. But worst of all, I get bored, and I get bored quickly. If I lay on the couch in front of the TV, or sleep on and off throughout the day, I feel worse. But the more I lay around, the faster I get better. But I can't sit still without feeling guilty, or like I'm wasting time, unless I'm really upset, or sometimes if I'm with someone else. And honestly, I act similarly on weekends. I hate laying around, and I hate sitting still for too long. So either this is a good thing that I like to seize the day, or it's terrible that I don't know how to shut myself off. My brain goes from the moment I wake up in the morning and doesn't turn off until I'm asleep. I'm always thinking about five different things at once, and I frequently start walking somewhere, think about something else, and either forget why I'm there, or start walking in the complete wrong direction. I clearly need to center myself and do yoga, or something. There's got to be something somewhat wrong with this.