The Wright Way

The Wright Way

Wednesday, April 12, 2017

"Hope you're feeling better?"

I was asked just now - "Hope you're feeling better?" And my reply rather summed up how my body (and mind) are dealing with this latest viral invasion of my own immune system, which probably happened around 12 days ago at the start of April.

I do have a rather un-unique view of "The World" that keeps me well and grounded.
It is as follows:


Wellbeing

Our "Ship of Wellbeing", our health, steers a course through a whole variety of physical and psychological waters for us. This is always happening and it is part of our "How it is To Be."
To put it another way - How We are Being.

We have a certain degree of control over our own wellbeing - in terms of both the physical and psychological - and even with our innate spiritual wellbeing which lies permanently in the background of our sentience. And I like to think that our personal Immune Systems are how those degrees of control are made aware to us.
Of course, those Immune Systems don't come with a "How to use" manual - except perhaps for the one we often ignore called "Common Sense."

And this is why, through varying degrees of human frailty, ignorance and dumb stupidity, we will sometimes ask things of our Immune Systems that stretch them beyond their normal elasticity. 
Now resilience is the ability of something to return to its normal shape and elasticity once stretched - and these days, especially in terms of stressful pressures, we have something of an understanding of our personal mental AND physical resilience.


Physical

In terms of our physical health, we all live in a "world" that will repeatedly throw things and circumstances at us in an unpredictable and almost random way. The accidents happen - the viruses and bacteria arrive unannounced on the breeze - and so on. And our bodies deal with how they impinge on us; our Immune Systems are called upon.
And I'll pause there - and return to the reply I gave to the kind question/remark

"Hope you're feeling better?"

"How I'm dealing with this particular virus is rather like this ..." I began. "It is like a series of battlegrounds, so there's a war going on. 
From the outset though it appeared that I was winning, the effects of the virus attack increasingly gained a hold, and I was going away from Wellness towards Sickness.

Then at a critical moment of one of the "battles" I found a severe depletion of energy - and this was like a tipping point. I found I was slipping at an accelerating rate towards an area of not being well. It got worse - very quickly!

It felt like I was fighting this and all ensuing battles from a position of zero energy. And all the means of replenishing the energy could not be undertaken - because I needed at least some energy to do the replenishing!"

In endeavouring to replenish the "energy banks" I did the following ...
Without further ado I went straight to bed. Actually, I had no option to override here as I could feel my body starting to shut down. Alarm bells were ringing!

Over the next few days, in addition to going very early to bed in order to rest and sleep as much as I could, I actually did some other useful lifestyle things as well. Well, useful and efficacious for me anyway!
I became minimally engaged on social media, drank more water, ate more fruit, and used electronic devices - phones, computer, TV - as little as possible. And it all worked, to the extent that it slowed down the slide. Which meant that I was getting worse - but at slower rate. 

And there was a point - a nadir - on the energy graph, which I saw after I had passed it in time.

There were two pieces of toast on the worktop, waiting to be spread and eaten - and I remembered putting them there thinking, "I'll just go and lie down for a bit. Because I'm too exhausted to eat them right now."


"Feeling better, implies we are back to wellbeing, or top health. Are you better now? Better is not a word I can use to answer your question," I said to my enquiring well-wisher.
"I have got my energy back - and this is allowing my body to make the journey from HERE to being properly better once again, a much shorter journey. 
I'm not there YET I am making good progress!"

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