Since the beginning of April I have been attempting to rid my body of a sinus infection. I’ve been hacking, sneezing, draining and generally feeling miserable for weeks. Every few days or so I’d begin to feel a little better and then BAM, the next day I would feel like a wet rag. No matter how much water I drank or how much Mucinex I took, or how often I used my Neti Pot, my body just could not shake the yucky feeling of not wanting to get up and do anything.
All the while, I kept going to the gym in an attempt to sweat out the germs and toxins. I even pretty much kept up my usual routine of errands and meeting. For short periods of time I even felt better, until I developed a fever.
I have to admit that as a woman of a certain age, feeling warm is not foreign to me. I am apt to be stripped down to sleeveless tops while Dave is grabbing a sweater. A fever is a different story. When your body temperature exceeds 101 degrees, you not only feel like crap but you know you are really sick and home remedies might just not do the trick. But wouldn’t you know it, the very next day, my fever was gone again and I felt better.
Then last Friday, as I was on my way to Prayer Shawl ministry at Peace Lutheran, I passed my doctor’s office and decided to give them a call. Several attempts ended in busy signals. I figured I’d try after my meeting, not wanting to go through another weekend feeling badly.
At our meeting, my friends asked how I was feeling and I told them I was still waging war against my illness; a subject I was tired of even discussing and I’m sure they were tired of hearing about. They asked if I’d been to the doctor and I told them no but I’d been trying to call for an appointment but not getting anywhere.
As we went around the table sharing the highs and lows of our week, two different ladies mentioned the Minor Emergency room adjacent to my doctor’s office and shared what positive experiences they’d had when they’d gone there. I wondered if my condition was worthy of emergency room time. When I asked for an opinion, they all agreed it was and I should go.
So, after our meeting, I drove over to the little ER and presented myself to a rather bored looking receptionist. I asked if someone would mind looking at me. “Sure,” he said as the time stamped the form waiting in the stamper and then handed it to me to complete. “I’ve got one in triage” he said over the intercom and I heard an “OK” answer him.
Within seconds I was in an examination room, my vitals were taken and I was given a remote control to the TV. Not long after, a young doctor entered the room and asked me for a rundown which I provided. He gave me a prescription for an antibiotic and told me to follow-up with my physician in three to five days.Within twenty-four hours I was feeling much better and I dutifully made an appointment with my doctor for the following week.
So, why have I shared this story? After all, I said I was tired of discussing my sinus infection. Well, since I’ve had some time to ponder the series of events leading to my ER visit, I have realized that perhaps I was trying a little too much to deal with my illness on my own terms, believing I could handle it all by myself with no help. And boy, was I wrong!
So much of life is like that, isn’t it? We sometimes struggle needlessly with things that are really not within our control when we could simply ask for help and put the whole thing in our rear view mirror much faster. In this case, I should have called my doctor much earlier and I probably would have been spared at least a week of suffering.
Giving up control is not easy for me. I was raised to not only be self-sufficient but to be the person that others turn to for help. Asking for help feels like an admission of weakness of character. Silly huh? Like I’m omnipotent! No, clearly I need to re-evaluate this situation. It’s like the old saying, “If God is your co-pilot, you’re in the wrong seat!” I need to learn to be a better co-pilot and at times, let someone else take the wheel!