In Sickness and in Health

So Brian spent yet another weekend tending to me in my sickness. I first got sick with this latest bout of bronchitis about 10 days ago. That weekend, I spent it in bed for the most part with a pretty high fever. I limped through the week, throwing in a doctor's appointment and lung x-ray in there for good measure, and made it to the weekend. I actually was feeling pretty good by Friday nite, and went to the symphony with Brian and a couple of friends. Afterward, we went to Red Lobster, where I stuffed myself full of their awesome cheese rolls and seafood pasta goodness. I'm glad I ate that much because all week, I had... hmmm. How to put this delicately? Let's just say that most of what went in to my stomach was not spending a lot of time there. But it was coming back, not going through, if you know what I mean. Anyway, Thursday and Friday, I kept my food down. Unfortunately, on Saturday, I got really dizzy and nauseous, probably from a combination of the codeine in the cough syrup I was taking and an inner ear infection. I ended up getting so dizzy, I fell down in the foyer, at the foot of the stairs and looking up with the room spinning as if I were really, really drunk, except without the part people think is fun about getting drunk. Then my stomach relieved itself of its contents. Fortunately, there had been enough time and warning beforehand for Brian to bring an appropriate container nearby. All the while, Bri and I were pretty freaked out because we didn't know what was going on or what we should do. I eventually made it back to my bed, where I stayed except for a brief foray out for mass on Sunday morning and a quick grocery trip.

Anyway, the point of all of this is not to talk about me being sick or the yummy details but about Brian being really awesome and taking care of me again, running out to get Gatorade and making me homemade chicken soup and watching home improvement shows with me even though he's not all that interested in them, just to keep me company. When he's sick, he mostly likes to get left alone. So I have to repay him by picking up the next couple of rounds of dishes or not nagging him about leaving stuff lying around or some other way, but unfortunately, not by tending to him like he tends to me...

Hopefully, we won't test each other's commitment to our partnership in sickness too many more times. Hopefully, we'll just be together in health, and go through life that way. But in the meantime, we can each take comfort that we're together even in the bad times. And that may be the best part of being together - knowing that we're not alone in life anymore.