Urgent Care Nurse Practitioner Dan: You’re lungs are inflamed. Since this breathing treatment didn’t really work on you, my gut is telling me that you are going to need to rest for a while. This means no parties, no friends, no outings, just fluids and sleep.
 
Me: [I sit there staring at him blankly, heart racing.] How long are we talking here? 
 
Dan: At least four days. Since today is Saturday, I’d say Tuesday.
 
Me: I can do that. But I have a business trip on Wednesday morning, back Thursday night. Do you think I’ll be OK to do that?
 
Dan: [Pauses without speaking for a solid four seconds, squints at me like I have three heads, then relaxes his gaze.]
 
Well, ultimately that is up to you, Katie. But you have walking pneumonia [he says this slowly, for full effect], and since you’ve already taken a round of antibiotics, the best thing for you to do is rest. It is your call, but I’d seriously consider putting yourself on house arrest for a week to let the inflammation go down and for you to heal.
 
The last thing you want is a repeat of last week when you overdid it.

 

                      

Happiest of Augusts, Rainbows & Shitpiles readers. Yep, I named my newsletter. Those two words were some I used in my July newsletter and they stuck in my mind as an accurate way to describe life’s happiness, sadness, funniness and plain old shittyness.
 
The rollercoaster that is this beautiful life.
 
Since I’ve written last, I’ve experienced a kind of learning that can only be described as profound and also only explained in hindsight. I’m writing later in the month than usual because, well, I was in the shit storm of the lesson and thinking in the moment it was a lesson made me pissed off because why do I always have to make everything a lesson and can’t something just be shitty.
 
I clearly have zero feelings about this.
 
The lesson is that of body wisdom. That my body is something to be listened to, to trust and, when I lead with only my head, my body will shut itself down to give me a clear message. Simultaneously with that lesson is a tandem thought from my inner devil that tells me: well, you knew better than to do this and this and this and the fact that your body is shutting down is all your fault.
 
               

This cycle—the learning to trust my body and the mind trying to blame myself for being a villain against my body—I guess is normal, but nonetheless painful. But with this month, I’ve decided to change that voice inside my head, to dim it as much as possible because I don’t have time for that self-deprecating bullshit. I’ve found that the way my body actually heals is by me being loving to it, by giving it space and time to rest and that also means feeding my brain with thoughts that don’t include self blame and self hatred.
 
Kinda like I wouldn’t pour pure gasoline on a deep cut and expect it to heal (maybe 20% gasoline, ok bad joke); I won’t look at myself in the mirror and think I’m a garbage human because I get sick. It is what it is, and love is the only way.
 
So, here’s the story, in a nutshell.
 
I wake up on a Monday in mid-July feeling like I’m soaring above the trees, with a level of energy and enthusiasm for life I haven’t felt in years. I go about my week, meeting friends, having business meetings, yada yada. On Saturday night, I feel really tired. Bone tired. I go to yoga with a friend Sunday, have lunch with another friend and by that evening, I feel officially depleted.
 
I still blaze through the next three days, knowing I may be coming down with something, but deciding that not exercising is the best remedy. Other than that, I give myself the green light to do pretty much everything else.
 
By Wednesday, I’m out to dinner with my friend Marci. We were having a great time, when I start to cough about a third of the way through the meal. I get some hot tea, and it does nothing. By the end of the meal, I am unable to speak more than three words without coughing into my napkin. Marci is concerned; I brush her off (I’m fiiine, really, thanks), and walk to my car.
 
The drive home takes me 20 minutes and in that time, my body shifts into low gear. Like watching a live-action film suddenly turn to slow-mo, my body is giving me signals that something is up. I walk into the house, say hello to Tyler and by the third word out of my mouth, my vocal chords shut off.
 
Shut off.
 
This had never happened to me before. Are you OK? He asks from the couch. I shake my head and squeak out that I’m losing my voice. The following morning, my vocal chords have left the building. They’ve gone to Barbados.
 
For the next four days, I cannot speak. If I try, my body becomes so tired I have to lie down. My only form of communication is email, although I become tired at my computer after five or six minutes. Other than that, I can whisper at the same level that you’d whisper in a funeral when the person next to you can see your mouth moving but you are speaking so softly as not to offend the family of the deceased that the person next to you looks at you like are you actually saying anything?
 
Talking on the phone is out of the question. Tyler has to call several places to cancel appointments for me. Even our conversations at home turn into one-way monologues by him with me nodding at the appropriate times.
 
The following week I finally decide to take antibiotics. I’ve developed a companion cough to my vocal chord sabbatical that is wracking my body in ways I won’t explain here. The antibiotics cure the cough in 48 hours, and by that time my voice is about 60% back, which makes me sound less like myself and more like a phone sex operator. My mind rejoices: Yay! Let’s go see all the people and do all the meetings and get back to LIFE! So what if you sound like someone should be paying you $9.99 per minute?!
 
I do that. For two days. At the end of the second day, I’m out to dinner with my friend Shannon and my voice starts faltering again. In that moment, something clicks—there is a conversation happening between my mind and body telling me: Yes, you’re having fun with this person, but it is time to go. It doesn’t matter that you’re only 30 minutes into this dinner.
 
TIME. TO. GO.
 
I proceed to sit there for another four hours.
 
I come home and my body puts me in detention. Worse than that, it expels me. But this time, instead of fighting it, I surrender. And that’s when Dan, the nurse practitioner, comes into my life.
 
For the record, I don’t go on that business trip. I sit in my house for another seven days and express gratitude for my body’s wisdom. Gratitude for having a job that I can do from anywhere and take naps between deadlines. And an incredible, overflowing amount of gratitude for having a partner who stocks me with every over-the-counter medication and makes me dinner and gives me hugs (with his face appropriately turned away from mine, as not to catch anything).

                  

And I heal. Today, almost four weeks after the initial signs of my walking pneumonia, my energy is back. I’ve gone running twice this week and I feel great. It will take longer for my voice to return to 100%--I can’t belt out Katy Perry in the car (yes, I’ve tried, I sounded like a karaoke champion of a millisecond and then promptly turned into a bullfrog, followed by heavy breathing)—I’m at around 90% right now and that is just fine with me.
 
But man, the BODY. It knows what is UP. I want to say that I’m going to listen to it, turn up the radio station of its wisdom at full volume at all times, but I also know that I’ll slip up again. I’m hoping that instead of beating myself up about it (which was also a major part of this experience), I’ll send myself love and acceptance.
 
During the first week of this debacle, I was listening to a podcast where a woman explained that she used to get really mad at herself when she got sick. But then she realized that when her child feels sick, he doesn’t get mad at himself. When her dog gets sick, she just sleeps more and allows herself to recover. That sickness isn’t a weakness. It is a message from the body and listening to that message with a level of reverence and love is the only path to wellness.
 
I’ll leave you with a few quotes and poems I love:  

 
“trust your body
it reacts to right and wrong
better than your mind does
- it is speaking to you”

― Rupi Kaur, The Sun and Her Flowers
 
 
Today I asked my body what she needed, by Hollie Holden
 
Today I asked my body what she needed,
which is a big deal
considering my journey of
not really asking that much.
 
I thought she might need more water.
or proteins.
or greens.
or yoga.
or supplements.
or movement.
 
But as I stood in the shower
reflecting on her stretch marks,
Her roundness where I would like flatness,
Her softness where I would prefer firmness,
All those conditioned wishes
that form a bundle of
Never-Quite-Right-Ness,
She whispered very gently:
Could you just love me like this?”