Sick and tired of being sick and tired...

Wednesday I knew I was not feeling myself but I ignored the signs that illness was taking over. That night I suffered with 105 degree temperatures and the worst body aches and sore throat I have ever experienced. I felt like someone stepped on my spine, kicked me down the steps and then jumped on me over and over....yeah, that bad, I was in misery and convinced I was dying. My throat was almost swelled shut and felt full of gravel and sand.

You know that moment where you think, ok, this could be it, not going to the ER could be a bad decision...I really thought I was dying. I had a horribly stiff neck and thought I had meningitis. My lower back hurt so bad...it was seriously like the back labor I had with all my kids.

So as I laid there crying and moaning in pain and misery, with my cell in hand, ready to call night shift husband to come home and make it all better, I stared at my sweet sleeping baby next to me and fell into a deep sleep. I sweat through the fever and woke up feeling like I was hit by a truck, but the fever was gone.

I do not go to Doctors. I just don't. The last time I went, it was to an OBGYN was when I was pregnant with baby #1. At 25, I had never even been to a regular OBGYN visit. With baby #2 and #3 I chose midwives. Many years prior to that, it was for emergency reasons as an accident prone kid. I received stitches about a dozen times.

I think a lot of this has to do with watching my father die with cancer for 2.5 years and he was being treated as a guinea pig...that and I am not too crazy about western medicine...

I know if I went to the medexpress I could get my antibiotics and be on my merry way to health, but I choose to take alternative routes, kinda like many of my other lifestyle decisions. And because I am breastfeeding, and although it is supposed to be safe, I was not willing to take antibiotics.

I know at least five people who had the same symptoms and a few went to the ER and tested positive for strept. Where the Dr said it was a very strong strain of strept.

I treated myself with colloidal silver spray, homeopathics, green smoothies, raw garlic (steeped into a tea or blended to add to a miso broth soup) and lots and lots of herbal teas with lemon and raw honey. (red raspberry leaf, echinacea, rose hips, chamomile, hibiscus, nettles (fresh nettles in my soup)...oh and lots of water, some fresh squeezed OJ, carrot/celery/apple juice and lots of rest! (thanks to my sister for taking the older two boys all day friday!)

I am happy to say that three days later I am feeling much better. My house, well it is verging on disaster zone. Although my sweet sweet husband waited on me hand and foot brewing teas and making soups and doing whatever he could to make me feel better, he just can not clean like me. He would not allow me to lift a finger, which I am thankful for because the key to healing is rest, but I just do not know how to rest. But I let the house go and rested as much as possible.

It is a good thing I only get sick every 3 or 4 years. I do not make a good patient. I whine, I moan, I cry....it's pretty pathetic.

Oh, but here is an amusing moment of delirium...I never take OTC meds, but the few times I have, like after giving birth w/o drugs, I will take ibuprofen. With the high fever and severe body aches I was having and the throbbing head I decided I needed some relief.

It was 3 am, and the bottle was in the windowsill by the bed, I reached up to grab it in the dark and knocked it out the window and listened to it roll off the roof... (someone pushed the screen up like 6"). For an hour I laid there in misery contemplating getting it...and I did. I took my shaky and weak self down the steps out the front door and to the side of the house with my cell as a flash light to retrieve my pain relief. Oh, and did I mention I was in my underwear? Seriously, what a sight should anyone have seen me. Tank top, panties, hair everywhere, hunched over in pain and searching for a pill bottle...but they did help me sleep better. I did not even think about going outside at 3am in my undies...I will blame the fever.