They feel more like tennis balls. I hadn't eaten anything more than soup in days and even that was hard to swallow. I started feeling sick with a sore throat on Monday. By Wednesday things started getting worse and as I got home from work, the shivering started. My temperature was starting to rise and by that evening my fever was 102.5F! I've never felt so sick - or at least, don't remember ever feeling so sick. As the fever rose and my throat became more sore, I grabbed my cell phone and called Jeremy who was on the couch downstairs. I couldn't imagine getting out of bed.
He came upstairs begrudgingly. "When have you ever known me to not take care of myself when I'm sick?", I asked him. "Help me". He didn't know what to do. I don't know what I expected. My mom would have known, but I'd have to settle for my husband.
"What do you want me to do?" he asks.
"Make me feel better", I replied.
Eventually this conversation turned into him going to Hardwood to race the Wednesday Night Championships. I wasn't going to die, we decided, but my climbing fever was making me feel worse and worse.
Fast forward to Saturday, I finally called my mom to tell her I had Strep Throat. She asked if I'd been eating and I said 'not much'. She got right in her car and came down, despite my pleas for her not to. The house is a disaster and I'm pretty sure there were things growing in the kitchen sink, it had been so long since I'd felt well enough to clean.
That's the great thing about moms. She didn't care and when she arrived she set about making me feel better. Four hours later, in a now clean kitchen, she'd made my favorite German dish... roladen - a yummy stew with thin slices of beef wrapped around pickles. It was somehow perfect to make me feel better.
I don't know what her secret is, but my mom always knows what will make me feel better when I'm sick - all of it is psychological for sure as the only cure for me right now is the bottle of Amoxicillin on my kitchen counter. Not to knock my husband's efforts, but he just isn't mom.
