Sick and Sad

I cry when I get sick.

A deep-seated, overwhelming sadness rises to the surface making me vulnerable to every sappy fare offered on TV. It’s uncovered by a virus that’s eaten through the protective layers I placed around it, protecting myself from my past, and as I lay whimpering with the tears rolling I feel so fucking sorry for myself. It’s odd.

I did my last shift at the hospital on Thursday and unknown to me as I left my keys with the charge nurse, I took home a virus that put this normally healthy body on its ass. The virus spent Friday getting to know me. Silently infiltrating my immune system it multiplied like, well, like a virus waiting for adequate numbers to strike. Munching peanuts and swilling red wine, I watched a movie ignorant of the war that was rising within.

The virus sounded the attack at 7AM. I had a brief warning as their troops stirred. I tossed and shifted, sweated and chilled. I began thinking “What the..” and then ran for the bathroom. A few minutes later the room smelled like peanut butter. They had remained in my gut, their progress stymied by the nazi virus who had sealed their usual exit and they waited for an alternate escape route. Cowards.

Those that know me know I hate to puke (I could never be bulimic). Ten minutes of snorting didn’t dislodge all the partially digested peanuts from my nasal passages and the burning assault of gastric juices on tender nasal mucosa brought my first emotional response; withering self-pity. I’d have done anything to avoid this and it was about to get worse. Phase two of the two prong attack began and I sat where I previously had my head. The southern exit was as busy as the north as the innocents frantically fled the scene. Clammy and bowed, I wanted to surrender but they weren’t done. Some peanuts had missed the initial exodus and were panicking. I flushed and flipped.

And so began my day. Being unusually healthy means lacking the usual resources for recovery. I’m impatient at the best of times and felt impotently angry at being ill on my first days post employment. But I was powerless, reading my e-mail was too much effort, and then the sadness set in. She and He flew the coop to escape the virus and me leaving me to stew in reverie but while I’m crappy at being sick I’ve become an expert on sadness. It was time to get clinical on my ass.

I’d first noticed the relationship between a weakened immune system and my emotions in 1979. I was alone (a prime environment for sadness) and on day one of a flu bug. Too weak to dress, I was watching reruns on daytime tv in my bathrobe. An episode of All in the Family came on and as Gloria went toe-to-toe with Archie I cried. “Can’t they work it out?” I whimpered as tears gathered and then in an “Aha!” recognized the real reason I was crying; I was sick. Not exactly Nobel worthy insight but being able to stand back, dissociate, think instead of feel allowed me to get back the control. I don’t think it’s important to be in control all the time but it was important to find out I could get it when I needed it.

One of the most valuable skills I’ve honed over the years is the ability to emotionally detach. I mentioned it briefly in an earlier piece and referred to overwhelming grief as an enormous steak that would make me sick if I tried to eat it all in one sitting. Grief is good, grief is normal but too much of anything can kill. I developed the ability to push myself away from the table.

It’s called Cognitive therapy, recognizing thought patterns that result in predictable behaviours and emotions. There’s a ton of literature on the field but for a good overview of this and other therapies check this out.

For me it just means taking a breath, stepping back and saying... it’s odd.