When someone asks me, “How was your weekend?” or “Where have you been all week?” all I can think to respond is “I’m pretty sure I died.” I obviously didn’t, because I’m writing this, but as someone who doesn’t get sick often, I felt like I was dying. However, I have learned a lot in my five or so days of being bedridden, because I had so much time to think and overanalyze my body.
Here’s what I’ve learned:
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It is possible to feel your heart beat resonate throughout your mouth and it hurts.
I had a severe throat infection that spreads quite quickly into my jaw, so I become very familiar with the pain of feeling my heartbeat in my throat. What hurts is when your heartbeat matches the throbbing in your jaw and reverberates throughout your skull.
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It’s possible to watch almost two full seasons of Game of Thrones in two days.
When you’re bedridden and bored it takes a bit less time to fly throuhg multiple seasons of a show than it should.
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Pain Meds give you very weird, vivid dreams.
Now, I don’t mean weird as in dreams about jumping on the back of a dragon and flying off to have tea with Bigfoot. I mean weird as in extremely realistic. I woke up plenty of times from my fevers confused, because my dreams felt so real that the real world felt false. It was jarring but thankfully, short lived.
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Any minor inconvenience will drive you insane.
I didn’t realize how irritating things that my friends do every day would bother me so much. Like, “Gosh, why do you breathe like that?” Why did it bother me? Probably because I was miserable, in some serious pain and tired.
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You will cry for no reason.
I cried when my friend told me she loved me, and also when she brought me a large bottle of applesauce. I cried every time my Grandma called me. I cried when someone laughed weird. I cried every time my boyfriend went to class. I wasn’t sad at all. Normally I wouldn’t cry for any of these things, but I was on so much medication, because I was THAT sick, that emotions were too much for me to handle and just resulted in the waterworks.
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You will never be more grateful for being able to breathe out of your nose more than in this moment.
When you’re sick for an extended amount of time, it feels like Christmas morning when the pressure in your head finally subsides and you can breathe out of your nose again. It makes you think twice about taking a simple act of uninterrupted breathing for granted.