Monday 13th March 2017
I don’t do ill.
I’m very practical when it comes to illness. I made a decision back during Leggedon that I had two choices, be a victim to illness or to fight it. Ever since that decision I stopped taking days off just because I didn’t feel 100%. That was just giving in. That said, it was also about being sensible. It might not be a good idea to do a massive workout if you had flu but that didn’t mean you couldn’t sit at your desk and do some writing.
So when I had stitches in my leg last year and they told me to rest up and not walk on it, I queried this, understood that it was about the wound getting infected rather than the act of walking causing the stitches to split, and continued to walk on it (although making sure I kept it clean)
This morning I had a doctor’s appointment. My stomach has been like glass since my hospital appointment and all the stress relating to the follow up appointment has been very challenging. My worry was could this be a sign of illness internally, and if it was in my stomach, would that mean it could also be entering other organs that would be more life-threatening? Couple this with the fact that I never got an appointment, I’ve been quite stressed.
My GP seems to think that the symptoms point more to stress-related IBS than illness brought on by the worry. He pointed out a few things that made it seem more the one than the other.
But still, I need to lessen my stress as that can cause issues with the illness so aside from reassurance it was decided to take it a little easy for a couple of days and see if this helps. This is a change for me. Having a professional reassure me is probably all I need to bring my stress levels down and I’d normally work through the flare-up. But we decided to try a different approach, by taking a few days off and see whether that brings it under control quicker.
Now I have to be honest, my first thought was that not doing the day job for a couple of days would be a great way to get a lot of writing work done, but that’s not what happened.
I had a bit of a sore throat anyway but instead of diving into work I just chilled in the morning and didn’t do any work (writing or otherwise). I just surfed the internet and did nothing productive.
Then in the afternoon, I decided to start re-reading Gardens of the Moon. I really want to read the entire Malazan series as I loved Gardens (still took me 2 attempts though). I lay on my bed and read the introduction and it had the effect of making me feel sleepy so I ended up having a sleep for 3 or so hours. I think it did me a lot of good, although I was groggy for the rest of the day.
I tried to listen to another Beneath Ceaseless Skies short story as I prepared the evening meal. However, this one (The Wind Shall Blow) had bad quality audio and combined with my groggy state I kept losing the thread of what was happening. So I gave up on it.
As I was feeling groggy from the sleep I skipped Swordfighting tonight. I really wanted to go. I felt worse yesterday and still fought well but I’d committed to the idea of trying forced rest.
Then in the evening, I loaded up Star Wars The Old Republic for the first time in years, created a new character and played through the first zone. There’s some nice storytelling here. I found when I originally played it, it actually annoyed me as being a storyteller myself I felt very constricted by the way the character was enforced on me. I wanted different response options and whilst I realise that technically it isn’t possible, it kept breaking the immersion for me. But chilling out tonight, I wasn’t so deeply involved and so was happier to just go along.
It was fun and there is part of me that wants to play more but at the same time, I don’t even have time for Warcraft currently.
So I achieved precisely nothing today and I’m not too sad about that. This is an experiment. As much as I want to believe that taking a couple of days off will have no benefit, I’m not so arrogant as to not try it. If nothing else, it helps me isolate a few symptoms and see if rest improves it.
It made for a nice break but I suspect that by tomorrow I’ll be chomping at the bit to get some work done.
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