#womensstuff

My husband is ill! He’s had a chesty, wheezy cough for about 3 days now, 1 and a half of which, he has spent in bed, because he wants to get rid of it before he goes back to work next week.

I realise my words are not exactly dripping with sympathy, but I do sympathise with him, really I do. It’s awful coughing your way through the day and night, with a raised temperature, not sleeping because of all the coughing. It’s awful that every time you cough your throat feels like you’ve swallowed a cheese grater and your back aches with the force of prolonged coughing.

I get it because I’ve had the same chesty, wheezy cough for two and a half weeks. TWO AND A HALF WEEKS!

Unfortunately, I don’t have the luxury of staying in bed to get rid of it before I go back to work, because I am always at work! I manage the kids and run the household so there are no holidays or breaks. Whether it’s Monday or Sunday, a regular school day or Christmas, there are things to be done. The groceries don’t appear in the kitchen by themselves and unfortunately the laundry fairy doesn’t exist!

In these two and a half weeks, I have coughed my way through school holidays and organising play dates/activities for the kids, my birthday, a pre-Christmas mini break on the Gold Coast with the family, cooking a ham for Christmas Eve dinner, Christmas day, organised and entertained friends on Boxing Day and New Year’s Eve, plus all the day to day activities that don’t stop, in between.

Yes the husband works hard as he is the major bread winner and once he gets back to work it’s go, go, go!

I get it! I also realise that we are all different and as such, we experience things differently. We respond to illness and infections differently, our pain thresholds are different, we react to stimuli differently. But does that in any way diminish the severity of my cough?

We hear things like ‘a woman’s work is never done’, ‘mothers never get time off’ etc, etc. I work just as hard, for little to no tangible reward so why does it feel like I can’t take time off to get better? Is it perhaps because I don’t ask for the time off? Or perhaps it’s because I’m a control freak and am too afraid to hand over the reigns even for one day.

Whichever it is, I either have to accept it or change it. It’s not going to change itself, only I have that power by asking for what I need.