I’ve been pretty quiet blogging in both Marriage and Pets lately because I’ve either been sick or on vacation. Or both.
Last week, to finally enjoy some time together after spending four months apart, Wayne and I went to Washington D.C. It was great except for one thing: Wayne was sick.
It was my fault. The week before we’d driven to Denver to be with family for Thanksgiving and right before we left I got sick. I tried my best to Lysol everything and not cough on Wayne, but when you’re stuck in a car for 17 hours it’s inevitable germs are going to get swapped.
So he fell sick right before we left for D.C. Then this past Saturday, our last day there, my nose started running again.
“Uh oh. I can’t be getting sick again, can I? I just had it.”
Back home Sunday I was laid up on the couch for the second time in as many weeks with severe chest congestion. Monday and Tuesday saw more of the same.
Wayne’s usually not the greatest nurse. Case in point, when we were in Denver and I was stricken with coughing fits every morning at three a.m., Wayne grumbled at me to do something about it. He never offered to help, he just expected me to drive myself to the pharmacy and get some expectorant or something. (When it first happened. After that I was expected to get up and get myself my cough medicine.)
But when he got sick I was expected to cater to him. Which of course I did.
So when I got sick for the second time I was not expecting anything except more grumbling. But he surprised me. It started with him making dinner for us Sunday night.
This makes history because I can’t remember the last time he made dinner. Not picked up take out, but broke out pots and pans and physically stood in front of the stove and cooked something.
Then he took it a step farther and cleaned dishes and the kitchen. He also took care of walking Murphy for me. Which was wonderful because I had time to concentrate on recovering and not running the household.
But I was ready to get back to feeling better, so last night when I was starting to be able to breathe again without sucking on my inhaler every three seconds I was pretty psyched. I knew I was on the road to recovery.
Except then I suffered a new setback. At 3:30 this morning a need to pee woke me. But when I went to roll out of bed, I couldn’t. An excruciating pain in my lower back crippled me. I could barely hobble to the bathroom and back, and when I went to lie back down again I was gripped by a new wave of pain that had me bawling.
My commotion woke Wayne, who I fully expected to grumble. But when he saw I was shivering from the pain and crying uncontrollably, he eased me back down and simply held me. It was all he could do.
And it helped. It didn’t erase the pain, but simply feeling his love let me know that whatever this new ailment was, he had my back. (No pun intended.)
Note
My back still hurts, but with the help of Advil I was finally able to get my behind in front of the computer long enough to write a few blogs.
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