A change of priorities
Image by Julio César Velásquez Mejía from Pixabay
One week ago, I thought it would be a regular blog writing Thursday, but then my son threw up in his bed when he was about to go to sleep. Not good. We have been here before but this time we also have a third one, a small baby so stomach illness is no joke. It is clearly one of those cases where you just insta-shift your priorities. And writing just went far down on that list.
When we heard about the stomach illness on the kindergarten, we instantly took both of our boys home. And we kept them at home for over two weeks, before they went back. Still, those nasty viruses apparently seem to be quite resilient because it didn’t take long from their resuming kindergarten until this happened. It is a bit frustrating that we couldn’t duck it even though we quarantined ourselves for 14 days.
Fortunately, this virus was a little bit friendlier than what we’re used to. After 48 hours, Isak was the only one who got ill. Consequently, we thought the coast was clear and relaxed. Until Tuesday night, that is. I woke up at around 02:00 and felt like absolute crap. It was on the level where you must place a bucket next to the bed, just in case. I escaped the master bedroom and took place on the sofa, just waiting for the hours to go by until morning. No sleep. This is the nasty thing about stomach illness. When it kicks into full effect, you are so ill that you cannot do anything. You can’t even watch a movie, all energy is diverted to merely existing. Then on Wednesday, on pure stubbornness, I managed to pull off a Teams project meeting and some work, but around lunch time I was beyond salvation again. I entered horizontal position and remained so until this morning, when I started to feel life slowly returning.
I am thankful anyway, because this was undoubtedly a milder iteration of stomach illness. I never had to puke, thank God. But the stomach has been in total uproar constantly and in pain. But that’s nothing compared to a proper seasonal stomach illness. I have been experimenting with intermittent fasting since a couple of months, and when the stomach is in turmoil, I think it is usually a good idea to just let the poor fellow get some rest and not eat anything but water. Maybe my 20 hour fast helped with recovery a little bit?
However, there is only one action that is guaranteed to help and that is rest. Sleep and rest. It is quite possible that my monster work week recently made my immune system weakened and now I had to reap what I had sown. That’s why I plan to do the only wise thing tomorrow and get some hours of extra sleep. It is not worth it to push on when the body is shutting down. Better to just hand the wheel over to Jesus and recharge the batteries. In the long run, that is the only thing that can make sure that the body stays functional. Also, it is okay to break a habit with valid excuses. The worst storm in a century and stomach illness are definitely valid excuses, and 269 out of 271 is still a decent hit rate.