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Being Sick Sucks
Oh, yuck.
I have been writing lately, you just haven’t seen it. Partly because I’ve started writing entries (nine times now), but haven’t had the energy to finish any of them. Partly because I’ve been writing lots of essays—about the rise of the Extreme Right in Europe, how the Cold War affected the domestic politics of Indonesia, the symbolism in Oedipus Rex—and have preferred to spend my non-academic hours away from my computer. Partly because my laptop’s keyboard fell apart (don’t worry; it’s mostly fixed now) and it’s a major pain to type without functioning space bars, shift keys, command keys, or a majority of vowels.
But mostly, it’s because I’ve been feeling like hell and have wanted to spend most of my free hours in bed, knocked out with painkillers.
See, the short version of the story is that I had three major operations as a child, and the only lasting side effect is a hypersensitivity to changes in air pressure; I’m the sort of person who can feel when in my bones when it’s going to rain. Or storm. Or snow. Or hail. Sometimes hours beforehand. Most times painfully so.
And the last ten days have been no exception.
It’s officially autumn in Melbourne, that pesky four-seasons-in-one-day thing notwithstanding. The leaves have turned, and it’s rained pretty much every day of the last week and a half. Or storm clouds have moved overhead and changed direction late in the game. My raincoat and a pack of Panadol were given permanent spaces in my tote bag two weeks ago, and I anticipated that would take care of the situation. Maybe a minor ache or two on bad days, but nothing more.
Until I woke up—in the middle of a nasty storm—on Friday morning, tried to get out of bed, and my hips and back staged a work stoppage in protest. Grrr.
I’ve had it bad before, but not that bad. Not unless you count immediately after the surgeries, which I don’t; I’ve never been unable to move. I’ve moved and then winced in pain before, yes, but immobility was a new—and entirely unpleasant—state of affairs. Maybe it’s just tougher this year because I’m away from home and all these new experiences require more energy, I don’t know. But for the first time ever, I’ve been forced to rely on prescription-strength painkillers to just make it through my day or sleep at night.
Ick. Maybe writing will resume when I no longer need my meds like a drug addict begs for a fix. Maybe it’ll resume when I adjust to the side effects and the nausea that accompanies the lack of pain no longer bugs me. Maybe it’ll take another few days, when the monster called Academic Writing releases me from its iron grip.
I don’t know. But soon, I hope. Part of me really misses writing here.