Self-Care During Coronavirus

Folks don't necessarily like the term "self-care." They say, "Back in the good old days we were tough; we didn't bother with wussy things like self-care!" To that I say this: perhaps some self-care would have been advisable back in those days!

my reading this morning

Adam did some irritation to his eye, and it's all red. This morning I stumbled out of the bedroom and saw him sitting on the couch with a piece of medical tape across his closed eye. I, on the other hand, have been worrying with tooth-ache. My molars give me trouble, and I've been nursing them along for over a year. They'd been doing so well! Then about 2 days ago ... kabbam! And I really didn't want to go to the dentist office, with all the coronavirus floating around out there. Was the dentist even open? Yes, they were. Could I possibly avoid it? Well, last time I delayed going to the dentist it cost me a lot of money. 😒 (I just discovered that we can put emojis into a blog post. Who knew?!)

Adam made dinner using our fresh asparagus.

Adam hates it when I need to go to the doctor because I am quite slow in actually going. I got out the heating pad and held it to my face. I drank hot herbal tea. I took Tylenol every 5 hours. I moaned and groaned. But then I slowly realized it was better if I lay on one side ... and I wondered if it was (once again - I'd forgotten) my sinuses and my very poor drainage on the left side of my face and neck.  Then I recalled the facial massage techniques I'd used before, to assist drainage. This video is so good:

I've been doing this all day, and it's worked! My tooth pain is gone. I haven't had Tylenol since 8:20 this morning. I don't have to go out to the dentist office!

I'm involved in two stories right now: one that I'm reading and one that I'm writing. Both of them are scarier than the coronavirus. That may sound ridiculous, but it's true. I'm reading Nine Coaches Waiting by Mary Stewart. This novel is scarier than the last one I read by her. She does suspense -- kind of a nervous thriller story in which the first-person young female narrator is in danger of being murdered and is awaiting rescue from her true love. I have to read it in the morning, because if I read it in the evening I have trouble falling asleep.

I'm finishing the editing on Ten Days at Federal Hill. It's also a bit tense at the end, and I have only myself to blame, since I wrote it. Scary, tense stories are difficult to read during scary, tense times in life. They are a lovely distraction when life is sailing along and seems almost boring. As the mother in The Railway Children said to her youngsters after they'd lost all their money and their father was in prison, "Well, children, you've always said that you wanted something to happen, and now it has."

first iris in bloom

What's happening out in the world right now doesn't even seem real. We were all traipsing along, doing our thing, and then a pandemic hit Earth across the head. Isn't it strange and rather terrifying to think of the entire Earth reeling from the blow?

I wonder if humanity will change its ways after this sobering distress, or will we go right back to our old bad habits. How will it impact our family's life? When today's children look back on it in thirty years, how will it make them feel? Will they simply remember it as the time when everyone stayed home together and they learned to play Monopoly, and the milk ran out?

Adam will nurse his eye, and I'll nurse my teeth, and we will make it through. I try not to think of it as an apocalyptic event, but as a sobering reminder of how flawed we are, that we can succumb to a disease just as readily in 2020 as they did in 1918. We are no better, no smarter, no more prepared, for all our technology. Our fast-connected world has only made it worse.

Stay home and take care of yourself. If you can't stay home and must go to an essential job, may God go with you and protect you.