My Sick Days

Realizations about life after you fell ill, translated…

Twenty-eight years ago, all of my best friends’ conversation topics revolved around family, marriage, and childrearing experiences; and in a blink of an eye, we’d all become, middle-aged, white-haired elderly women, and, now, we’d, talked on how to alleviate the symptoms of our menopause.  I’d told my friend with this gladness, “I haven’t start to experience any of the symptoms yet”, but, a short while ago, I woke up, and, was in pain, for an entire month, I’d, sunk, to the lowest of my life then.

That day, I was so happy, to embrace my days off, then all of a sudden, the room started turning around, I couldn’t get up out of bed, I’d gone to the emergency rooms, and was diagnosed with BPPV, and needed to get surgery to have it set right.  The doctor stressed to me, “you have BPPV in both your ears, you may need multiple surgeries to correct them”, I was in treatment for almost a month, and still, NO improvements.  From the day I started getting sick, bedtime became a total nightmare, as I lay myself down, it was as if, I’d, fallen into this depth of an abyss, the world just swirled and turned, and, getting up was the start of another dizziness spell, it’d taken away my energies, I’d started, wearing a frown constantly then.

Thankfully, my husband stood by my side, constantly tried calming me, “Don’t worry, so long as I’m here, you will not trip and fall.”, from the late nights to the early mornings, whenever I’d made a rustle, he’d awakened out of his dreams, and accompanied me to the bathrooms or got me a glass of water.  Because as I’d lowered my head, I’d started feeling dizzy, my husband even took up on himself to bathe me, used his slightly chubby fingers, rubbed down my hair, then, carefully, rinsed away the foams with warm water.

My daughter-in-law also came back home a lot too, my eighty-year-old mother hot lined me a lot, my daughter encouraged me repeatedly, “Mom, you’re always optimistic, you are, everybody’s spiritual guide, at this time, you should NOT allow yourself to get caught up in the miseries caused by your physical conditions, you will, slowly recover; a lot of people are battling their illnesses, even playing that tug-of-war between life and death, everything will be all right.”  After hearing her, I’d slowly, pulled myself back up, and my condition improved by the day.

After I made a full recovery, I’d returned back to the kindergarten I taught at, the children all came towards me at once, started talking incessantly of how they’d missed me when I was away.  The two year old Wei suddenly asked, “Teacher, why didn’t you come?”, I’d bent down and told her, “Teacher had an ear ache, so I can only stay at home.”  She’d extended her arms, patted my ears, said, “Don’t worry, it’ll be okay”.  Such a familiar gesture, every time in the past when she’d started to cry, I’d always held her in my arms, said to her, “oh, don’t worry my love, it will be okay.”  After I’d heard it from her after I got sick, the words was, especially soothing to me, I’d recalled how when I was ill, so many people I loved showed care and concerns toward me, how blessed I truly am!

As we get to a certain age, our bodies start to deteriorate, and, nobody can calculate when illness will come knocking, other than following doctors’ orders, the support from close friends and families, and loved ones, is the best cure of all.

So, it wasn’t until you fell ill, you’d started feeling the love from around you, it wasn’t that the love those closest to you weren’t there from before, it’s just, that you’d fallen ill, you’d felt the concerns from your loved ones especially, and that, is how you’ll learn to, cherish those who are, closest to you in life, that would be, a lesson learned from getting sick, I suppose…