Recovering From Sub-Optimal Conditions


I had a bunch of other stuff I wanted to share today, but then two things failed: One, WordPress. Two, my digestive system. I think the pair are related, like in the landmark health resource “Our Blogs, Our Selves.” Ha ha! Silly joke. Pass the Pepto.

So basically, WordPress isn’t letting me insert tweets and instagrams into blog posts, so hopefully that issue will resolve before tomorrow’s planned roundup. It’s also constantly prompting me to reconnect my Twitter account to my blog, and it doesn’t seem to be working no matter how many times I try.

Neither of these things is particularly world-ending, however, much unlike the severe intestinal upset that kept me awake all night last night. 

Honestly, I have no idea where this even came from! I had dinner at one of my favorite places, ate the same things I’ve eaten dozens of times, and I’ve never gotten sick. But I woke up at 1:11 this morning and was basically as sick as you can imagine. Go ahead. Imagine. Imagine it.

Now I tell you, it’s way worse than you’re imagining. I touched on this when I described my Valentine’s Day illness three years ago. Now, last night wasn’t THAT BAD, as I was able to crawl back to bed at 5am to sleep for two more hours, but today has been rough. I’m plodding along, getting things done, but it took until 1pm for me to be ready to rejoin the living.

Enter my Special Sick-Day Recovery Self-Care Tactics!

Are you ready?

First, I wash my face and do my skincare routine. Mainly because I have to be able to look my dermatologist level in the eye when I promise I do this every day, per instructions. Also, I find that being ill usually means I’ll be sweaty or my eyes will get crusty from crying and snot. I’m just coloring in the sketch of Sick Me that you imagined two paragraphs ago! Being able to wash all of that off my face and start fresh is KEY to getting back to life, back to reality.

Second, I brush and floss my teeth and rinse my mouth out with Listerine. Let’s just say, my mouth had that “not so fresh feeling.” Once my face is clean, I usually realize that I have the Breath of Death, and I need to make my teeth match my skin, that is, be clean as possible.

This is where things start getting a little weird. The third thing I need to do is clean my ears. Don’t tell your doctor friends, but I totally use Q-tips for this. I go slowly and I’m very careful! I’ve always had a weird “thing” about cleaning my ears, basically, I clean them out as frequently as I water my plants, which is like every other day or every third day. I do this weird thing where I dip one end of the Q-tip into hydrogen peroxide and use it to swab out my ear, then use the dry end to wipe it down. I use another Q-tip for the other ear, and I love the way my ears feel tingly and clean. Maybe it’s a sinus thing? But my head feels clear when my ears are clean!

Once I’ve done those three things, I usually feel so much better and I’m able to get through the day. Fully getting started usually means that I’ll write an entire blog post, from start to finish. both started Like this! Ta-da! It’s so easy to waste a poorly day doing little bits of this and that, but if I can say that i and finished something (no matter how unimportant), it makes it easier to accomplish everything else that comes up after that.

Feel free to follow this regimen when you’re trying to wrench yourself out of a state of illness and back in to the bright and shiny world. Now I’m off to try to eat some food, troubleshoot my WordPress issues, and see a man about a horse! No, not that last part. But hopefully I can polish this turd of a day (ugh, groan, no poop jokes, it’s too soon) into something productive. Bye!


4 responses to “Recovering From Sub-Optimal Conditions”

  1. I had a “finish” day!!! I thought of you….and it felt great to actually be DONE with a few things!! Nothing started, three things finished! Hope you are feeling better. Take a day to recover.

    • Thanks! Thinks are picking up speed again so I need this day, unfortunately. Dunno what it was that set me off, because normally only eating something bad would make me sick like this, but I can’t imagine what because I’ve been really careful!

    • Thanks! Yeah, I can’t tolerate gluten, so I know the feeling of being destroyed from the inside very well. I think this might have been a stomach bug, as it lasted a lot longer and seemed to respond to Pepto… whereas I could chug a whole bottle of Pepto during a gluten attack and it won’t help at all.

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