2025, Family, Health, Kids, Medicine, Uncategorized

Self Care

42 Comments

Aside from a mild bout of diverticulitis when we were in Brookings, I felt pretty good during the visit. Everyone else seemed to feel pretty good, too.

Grandson went home from school on Wednesday with a fever that had spiked to 102° by yesterday afternoon. Daughter-in-Law was also home with a fever, and Son was at home taking care of both of them.

Yesterday Husband started feeling puny, as the say out here, with fatigue and a a low grade fever, so he took a nap and decided to not go into the office in the afternoon. He chose not to take any Tylenol so as to give his immune system time to heat up and fight off whatever was plaguing him. By evening he felt better.

Thus far I have not started to feel “puny”, but I plan to engage in my self care, which is to stay at home, cook, sleep late, and not leave the house until Sunday morning when we sing at the 9:00 church service and play bells at 3:00 at the local If Music Be The Food Of Love concert at our church to raise money and donations to the food pantry.

What is your self care when you start to feel “puny”. What are your euphemisms for illness? What major childhood illnesses did you have?

42 thoughts on “Self Care”

  1. I feel like I should knock on wood before I answer this. I actually have a relatively sturdy constitution so there aren’t a whole lot of illnesses that get me down. Even when I got Covid last year, it was completely asymptomatic. So I don’t have any euphemisms for feeling sick. And how do you pronounce PUNY? Is it puny like something small or pun-y like a bad joke? I had measles and mumps when I was a kid, but I don’t remember anything else. My mom had scarlet fever when I was four and I remember basically playing outside for morning until night because they didn’t want me in the house too much.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  2. The one carryover from my childhood that I have about being sick is the application of Orange Crush. We didn’t do pop at my house when I was growing up, except when my sister or I were sick, then there would be Orange Crush in the house. Unfortunately, since there’s not much illness here, there’s not much orange pop either.

    Liked by 4 people

    Reply

  3. Being a child in B.V. (Before Vaccine), I had the basic chicken pox, mumps and measles. I have a sliver of memory of being taken to a chicken pox party. Dumb. Watch for the return of these “just get it over with” events with the advent of RFJjr medical practice.
    “Crummy”

    Liked by 4 people

    Reply

  4. Like Sherrilee, I am so rarely sick I don’t have any nicknames for it, nor do I have any rituals for self care. I had the usual childhood diseases—measles, mumps and chicken pox—but the last time I ran a significant fever was in the early ‘80s and the last time I vomited was in the early ‘70s and that was food poisoning, I think.
    When I had Covid, I guess I had sufficient symptoms to prompt me to test for it, but otherwise it meant just isolation for a week or so.

    Liked by 4 people

    Reply

    1. After decades of working with young children, I have been exposed to and become immune to many viruses that fell my colleagues on the youth and family therapy team at work.

      Liked by 2 people

      Reply

  5. Rise and Shine, Baboons,

    I had all the communicable diseases as a kid. Having experienced that, I also was aware of the dangers. A friend of mine contracted Rheumatic Fever after having the Measles, and had to be in bed for6-8 weeks. I used to go visit her and became very aware of the dangers to her heart if she was not still. With the advent of vaccines, people have forgotten the dangers some illnesses hold. My sister had the mumps and had a degree of swelling that was hard to believe.

    WHat gave me no end of illness were lung and throat issues. I had repeated cases of the croup, spending many hours in a closed room with a vaporizor hissing. That would morph into bronchitis or walking pneumonia. I still have contracted this as an adult. What a cough that is.

    Liked by 5 people

    Reply

  6. Self care is just napping a lot, drinking a lot of water, and chicken soup of some kind. I have a package of Matzo Meal soup in the cupboard. In the past I might make lemon-garlic-honey tea.
    And laying low – postpone the appointments!

    As a kid I had two kinds of measles (3-day and “red”) and chicken pox, never got mumps. I think it was the read measles that lasted for two weeks – our mothers must have gone mad!

    I do vaguely remember “feeling crummy”, now that Wes mentions is…

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  8. I’ve got the crud.

    I stay home, drink fluids, and eat chicken soup, or nothing at all. I take acetaminophen for fevers above 102, which I don’t have often. Otherwise I suffer through it and let the fever burn itself out. I’m a ridiculously whiny patient though. It’s good that I am my own nurse.

    I had all the viral infections, and all the vaccinations. I had chickenpox, severe mumps, and all the colds and flu that circulate in elementary school classrooms. I remember being sick in bed with a fever once, and having weird hallucinations. My mom and family were near me but they were all very tiny and their voices seemed to come from far away. They were observing me and talking about me in their tiny little voices.

    I used to work with younger women who had small kids at home. They’d come in to work with every virus that was going around daycare. I had no immunity to any of these horrid viruses, and I caught them all. Going to work with these young women literally made me sick. I begged them to stay home when they were sick, but they preferred to use their sick leave for a fun day and share the virus with me and all of our clients. I got really sick a couple of times, with a cough that stuck around for months. It doesn’t help that I have asthma. Since I stopped working, I haven’t caught any colds or flu at all. I have never had covid either. I do wear a mask when I’m in situations that I consider risky, and I’m a little OCD about using hand sanitizer.

    Liked by 5 people

    Reply

  10. One of my sisters had tonsillitis. The other sister and myself weren’t sick but the Air Force doctor recommended…”Tonsillectomies for everybody!”
    My parents regretted allowing that.
    In giving medical information to physicians about surgeries, that invariably comes up when I don’t include Tonsillectomy. It seems as though all military kids around my age got their tonsils out.

    Liked by 4 people

    Reply

        3. ENT recommended my tonsils come out when YA was one. Horrible pain and then breakthrough bleeding that required a second emergency surgery. And, of course, it didn’t help. But the experience did drive me to the allergist, who did solve the problem!

          Liked by 4 people

  13. My self-care when I’m “coming down with something” is drinking lots of hot water with lemon and honey or hot tea.

    As a kid, I had everything. Both Husband and I were hospitalized with pneumonia before we were a year old. I had pneumonia a few more times, along with many cases of tonsillitis (had the tonsillectomy), mumps, German measles, chicken pox. My sister and I had chicken pox together, and my mom put lipstick “spots” on one of my sister’s dolls to make her feel better.

    In college I had mono–I have almost no memory of that week, I was so out of it.

    Other than sinus problems, I’ve been pretty healthy since then (knock on wood).

    Liked by 6 people

    Reply

  14. I have a vague memory of having chicken pox. It came around again as shingles when I was 51.

    I believe I had measles and mumps too, but those childhood diseases were so common at that time, I think we all had at least one disease that could have been potentially fatal, but the statistics generally favored us.

    I usually drink some tea if I have a sore throat. Otherwise, I try to ignore symptoms as much as possile. I have stuff to do, I can’t be sick.

    Liked by 4 people

    Reply

  15. Another thought – I try not to take anything for a cold virus, because it will then mask how I’m feeling, make me think I can be active when I should be resting. The exception is if I have a stuffy head at bedtime – a cold tablet will help me get more sleep.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  16. Evening. I am not afraid of medication’s: I head right for the decongestant and Aleve or Tylenol. Usually a nap or two helps.

    “I can’t be sick, I got a show to put on!” *
    *Joe Gideon in ‘All That Jazz’

    Liked by 3 people

    Reply
  17. Pingback: Self Care – physiotherapy 91

Leave a comment