There are days when getting up in the morning for work is such a struggle.
For someone like me who sleeps late, everyday is a struggle and during these "struggingling" times, i often wish that i am sick just so i'd have a reason to stay in bed.
But never had i wished to be so sick that i'd end up bed-ridden for three days.
Wednesday, I was already diagnosed by Doc E, our company doctor with acute tonsillopharingitis with slight fever.
According to Doc E,my right tonsil is inflamed and has a pus. As i leave the office that night i was already suffering from terrible headache.
That night i still managed to log on to my facebook account and mock myself for my FB addiction.
The next morning, still feeling sick, i announced to my room mate that i wont report for work but as soon i a closed my eyes to resume sleep I got up without delay, determined to work instead.
As it was already, 7:30am I showered without heating the water, primarily to avoid being late, secondly, i was hoping that cold shower would relieve me off my feverish feeling.
For a while i thought it did for despite my coughing I was able to handle a number of calls, walk around the office and sing along a couple of songs in my playlist.
But when i started feeling feverish inside, started catching my breathe after each cough and when I can't seem to pinpoint what muscle or which joint aches and when I felt unexplainably tired, i went up to the clinic.
With another slight fever and an abnormal heartbeat of 120 from the normal count of 80, Jane - our company nurse suggested I go home but only after my heartbeat had normalize.
And so she made me lie down and rest in one of the rooms in our modest clinic. How nurse Jane cared for me that day is another story I'd soon share.
By 1pm I was sent home.
Despite the nagging feeling that I should pay Makati Med a visit for another check-up, atleast before I head home, just to confirm what Jane and I believed to be a flu. The scorching heat of the mid after noon convinced me that I better go home instead.
Lying in my bed alone in the boarding house, didn't give me much comfort. I was soon feeling sorry and crying from self-pity.
Being away from home and being sick is unbelievably depressing and so after I've cried a river and after hours of battling the idea of asking my father to have one of my brothers fetch me at the boarding house, i finally gave in.
By 11pm thursday, I was already home in Bulacan. As soon as Papa saw me not in my usual bubbly self, he was a picture of worry.
And while he was combing my hair with his bare hands asking me how i was feeling and what i wanted to eat he did not fail to inject a father's typical lecture.
Mama on the other hand was busy preparing my bed. She was the one who was up during the night checking if i have fever and made me take my meds.
As soon as I was in bed Papa turned off my cellphone to which I could not protest. Papa doesn't like seeing us texting when we are already in bed.
The following day, Friday, i forced myself to eat atleast two spoonful of lugaw for breakfast so i can take my meds and before lunch Mama gave me sliced apples and peeled ponkan in my bed which took me until Saturday morning to finish.
Normally, two spoonful of lugaw is equivalent to two and sometimes two and a half cup of rice and an apple and ponkan wouldn't take a minutes to disappear before me.
By luchtime of the same day, I was again served with lugaw wich I have drowned with the sabaw of nilagang buto-buto.
Since my bowl was almost full, my father who's beside me didn't notice that i am only sipping the soup and not really eating the lugaw.
The soup made me sweat a great deal though and atlast i felt better and so i thought. After a couple of minutes, i was back in my bed feeling restless once again.
Dry cough, head-splitting-ache, weakening muscle and joint pains did not leave me until Saturday afternoon so I until then i was not allowed to watch TV and use my cellphone.
I was behaved enough not to watch TV and I was clever enough to put my phone in silent mode for two days and so I was able to reply to a couple of messages even when texting is too much of an effort for me.
Today, I did not only have my shower after two long days, I am also free to use my laptop.
But this doesn't mean that I am ready to get back to work.
Unfortunately, I am far from being well. I still have cough and I still tire easily from walking from one point of our house to another albeit the insignificant size of our humble abode.
I was not allowed to leave home just yet and so while I'm here I'd have to bear my Papa dear's lectures:
1st: STOP my travels. He blames over fatigue due to my two recent out of town trips last January for my being sick.
2nd: Leave the boarding house and come home to Bulacan everyday so they can look after me, my food etc.
My two recent south-to-north-trips-in-one-day may have contributed in weakening my immune system which eventually gave up when i caught a colleagues' virus but of course i couldn't admit that to my father.
And there is no doubt that here at home I will have all the TLC I usually missed during weekdays but then
being home everyday doesn't guarantee that I'll be healthy and will never again get sick.
I know that He's just concern with my welfare and I am glad for despite my age, I still feel like a child with the way he takes care of me and i also feel like a teenager with the way her lectures me.
