Letting Someone Take Care of Me......

I have to confess, I'm horrible at asking for help or admitting I need help to anyone about anything. Last week, due to the increased activity and the temperatures climbing, I let myself become dehydrated and came down with heat exhaustion AND got some sort of bug. Basically, I was a wreck.

Having some sort of bug was bad enough, but have you ever really suffered from heat exhaustion? It sucks. The combination of the two made me want to crawl out of my own skin and be anywhere else. At one point, I hallucinated and no amount of sucking down water was really helping because the other symptoms I was experiencing from my 'bug' were taking care of any nutrients left in my body. I was achy from both the 'bug' and heat exhaustion and left wondering how much Gatorade do I have to drink for at least one of my ailments to go away.

I kept recalling the one question I was asked over-and-over recouping in the hospital in 2004 and 2005: "On a scale of 1 to 10, what's your pain threshold?" God, did I learn to hate that question. However, I found myself thinking about that question Wednesday late night and thinking "if I just took off my head, I'd be a 4, otherwise I was a 9". It's rare when I feel this crappy. In fact, I know I'm really sick when I want to cry, but my head and eyeballs hurt too damn much for me to cry. I also believe the fear I'd never hydrate and have to go to the hospital also helped bring on some tears (I hate being a patient in the hospital like others fear flying). Needless to say, I didn't get much sleep Wednesday.

Hubby was out-of-town Wednesday evening and although I thought about calling him at 2 a.m. to take me to the hospital as I was seeing no change, I didn't. I had just switched from water to Gatorade and hoping for the best. As my heat exhaustion came under control, my other symptoms took over. Bad cold? Flu? Who knows, but I felt like crap.

When Hubby came home that evening he took one look at me and knew I was too sick to take care of me. In the 5 years we've been together, I've never been this sick. He took Friday off and spent the entire weekend taking care of me. It was something I never experienced with my ex-husband (he let me drive under Valium to my MRI which I was terrified of going for and told me the test was unnecessary and I was making up the need for a MRI - ummmm, I think not dirt bag) and have to admit was pleasantly shocked at how wonderful it felt to have someone take care of me.

I still have issues asking for help, but the past year has been challenging me to do so. I wish I didn't, but it's nice to know I have wonderful people in my life now willing to help any way they can.