Episode 4 - The Plague

[INTRO] 

[00:00:01] LA: Welcome to the Positively Charged Podcast. I'm a certified coach who's innately curious and loves discussing life, work, family, and everything in between. My guests and I are sharing how we step into our power and live a positively charged life. Let's dive in.

[EPISODE]

[00:00:22] LA: Welcome, welcome, welcome. It is Lindsay here, your host, and I'm coming at you the same week that the podcast is being released, and that wasn't the intention actually. I was supposed to have another episode coming up this week, but things change. I have been reminded of that so deeply in the last few weeks, and that's what this episode is going to be about. So I'm switching gears away from coaching a little bit here. I'm going to bring it back, so there's some lessons learned I'm going to share with you near the end here. But I'm switching gears a little bit into talking about family and talking about personal life and all of those good things. If that's not your style, not your speed, not what you're looking to get from the podcast, no problem. No offense taken. But for my fellow parents out there, I'm sure you'll enjoy this comical re-creation of my last few weeks.

It's been a little bit crazy. Obviously, the pandemic is still happening, and there's still restrictions. Some have been lifted. Some are not. So that obviously is the foundation of anything health- related, is just how the world is still reacting in the pandemic. But my family has had quite a stint of illnesses, and it kind of starts actually at Christmas time, which is right now it's the first week of March. So Christmas time is a while ago. But we have been struggling to keep our home healthy, since about the middle of December, just right before Christmas. Right before Christmas, really, my husband got sick. He was COVID-negative, but it was just a really, really terrible cold. He was out for about a week. Then it was Christmas. Then we all got COVID. So me and my entire extended family who I had Christmas with and my immediate family and my home were all sick. That lasted for about a week or just over a week.

Then back to school, and my youngest daughter started at daycare as well in January. So it was, yeah, new germs being introduced to her for sure. She hasn't had a full week of daycare since January 1st. So all of January was just dodging colds and sniffles, and I think most families were kind of dealing with that, just runny noses and little coughs and things like that, that are just keeping them away from daycare school for a day or two here and there. But still testing negative for COVID, which is great. So we dealt with that in January. Basically, since February 1st, so for the last like four or five weeks, we have been plagued. I'm going to call this episode The Plague. But we have been truly plagued with an absolutely insane amount of ailments. The funny part or not funny part is I basically got all of them. So typically, how it works is I'm the immune one. I'm the one who kind of keeps it together and doesn't get that sick. So I'm setting the stage for the exact opposite of that happening. It was quite ridiculous. Ridiculous is the only word.

But it kind of started – Yeah, that first week of February, there was, again, like some colds in the house. We were just kind of rotating through a cold. Then I think the week of the podcast actually launching, it was this awful stomach flu. All of us in the house, so my husband, my two kids, myself, all had the stomach flu, and we all had it in different phases. So we were all having GI issues and puking and all of that on different cycles. It started off first with my youngest daughter, and then it was me, and then it was my older daughter, and then it was my husband. We all had the stomach flu. So there was a few days where all of us were very ill at the same time, but we kind of phased out when we started and ended. That was absolutely insane. I have never in my life seen so many people throwing up at the same time. It was just ridiculous, and it was the week of the podcast. So I was running around a little bit crazy and feeling really excited for that. It was kind of tempered by this weird stomach flu.

Also, it was luckily just the day before the stomach flu hit me, but I had a boudoir photo session, just to share this with the world, with a wonderful woman who I'm going to be inviting on the podcast. I hope that I'm just going to keep that quiet to myself for a moment. For that lovely surprise, I can't wait to have her on the podcast, the photographer who did my boudoir photography. I cannot wait to interview her. But I had this wonderful experience shooting with her. It has nothing to do with her. But literally, the next day, it was my turn to endure the stomach flu. So it was a bit of a week of managing that. Then it was my birthday. Then two days after my birthday and the launch of the podcast, that was February 18th, a couple days later, I wasn't feeling well. I tested positive for COVID, so I had COVID again. So this is the second time for me and the third time in our house that we'd had it. It was so disappointing. Honestly, I was so frustrated by the diagnosis by testing positive on my antigen test.

I wasn't really that sick, and I was supposed to go help a friend that night, and it was like I had a little bit of a stuffy – not even stuffy nose but almost like a sinus headache. I was like, “I don't know. This feels like it could be maybe a cold coming on.” I was supposed to go help a friend that evening, and I was like, “I don't want to bring any sickness to her really.” I didn't quite trust myself in the moment to know whether I was sick or not, so I was like, “Okay, I'll take an antigen test.” We did, and it was very unfortunately positive.

Of course, I text my friend and tell her that I, unfortunately, won't be able to support her that evening, and I was locking down for COVID. Luckily, it wasn't terrible. I wasn't that sick. It was, again, like a sinus headache. I didn't lose my sense of smell. I didn't lose any taste or anything like that. But while I had COVID, my youngest daughter got hand, foot, and mouth disease, which there was I think a couple confirmed kids in her class at daycare had it. All of a sudden, she started getting these kind of like rashy red spots on her face, and I was like, “Okay.” So she's got it now, and it got really, really bad. Her and I were both quite down and out. Again, I wasn't too bad but just didn't have a lot of energy. I was very tired and had this kind of sinus ache happening. So it was very difficult to take care of a little one-and-a-half-year-old, who is really struggling.

I don't know if you have experienced hand, foot, and mouth, but not only does it look like terrible, awful, so painful. But I think it actually is quite painful. Not only does it look painful, but it is. I know my little one wasn't eating. She wasn't drinking really. It was really difficult to keep her hydrated. She was having GI issues as well. It was very, really brutal. Maybe a few days into that where the hand, foot, and mouth is just getting worse and worse and worse, the rash is spreading and getting more angry looking. My older daughter started complaining of a sore stomach and like constantly talking about the sore stomach, and not eating, and getting kind of lethargic and tired. She had a really long nap one day and then slept in another day and just wasn't acting herself.

So while I was home with COVID and hand foot and mouth, my husband had to take my daughter to emergency because we were so worried that something was happening with her stomach. There was this day where I've got COVID, my little one’s got hand, foot, and mouth, my big one is at the hospital with my husband. I was like – all of us dealing with different ailments. Luckily, my husband who is actually the more prone one to colds and things like that, he usually is the one who gets it, didn't get have anything through all of this. So I'm so grateful for that because he was really holding the whole family together, and he runs his own business. So he was holding his business together and our family together all at one time. He really does deserve a trophy.

That day was kind of the rough day where it's like, “What is happening here?” Long story short with my older girl, nothing came of it. They suspected maybe a urinary tract infection. They suspected maybe she had COVID, even though she was testing negative. They just didn't know. They didn't know what to do with it, so she has some follow up blood work that she needs to do and so on and so forth. So we're still trying to eliminate that, but they literally just discharged her from the emergency department and just said, “yeah, come back if it gets worse,” and it really didn't. It kind of tapered off over the next few days. She's still even to this day, today, so this is a week later, she's still like, “Oh, I can't eat that much. My tummy hurts.” We don't know exactly what's going on there, but maybe just growing pains for a growing four-year-old. Who knows?

But all in all, I feel like I had to record this podcast because it was just so ridiculous, the amount of things that just happened all at once in our little family. It was just unbelievable. Sharing my story a little bit with certain people, I've just been getting a lot of people being like, “Oh, my gosh. Me too. I had a lot of – We've had a lot of sickness. It's been impossible.” I just really want to like share this story with the concept of like being a working parent during the pandemic has been really difficult. My husband and I are both entrepreneurs. We both own our own businesses. It's been definitely very, very challenging for us. I hope to have him on the podcast one day soon, so we can talk about that and just like how we made it through to the other side.

But just for any parent, not even just entrepreneurs, I'm really seeing you. I've been really brought into a humble position over the last four weeks, with how much stress and how much energy needs to be given out in order to manage your family and manage everything else. When I say everything else, I'm really meaning your self-care. That, for me, is kind of what made me wanted to record this episode to begin with was because I really noticed my self-care just completely crumble underneath me during this difficult time. It’s really affected my resilience. It's really affected my ability to deal with all of this. I just want to share that. I just want to share that vulnerable truth, just so you can look at your own self-care right now. Hopefully, you're not going through something nearly as intense as what we've been going through here.

There's more intense things happening. There's real medical parents out there who are constantly dealing with hospital visits and things like that. My heart and my love goes out to them. Because just this three-week, four-week stint of the constant appointments and the back and forth and being trapped in the house and just feeling ill on top of all of it, it’s just so much. So much to handle, and it's really given my energy a shake. I think that maybe that might be the reason why this is happening to me specifically or to our family because I needed to really get that cosmic 2x4 of another illness.

Part two is my COVID went away. I started testing negative, of course, and I wasn't getting better. I was getting worse. All of a sudden, I’m testing negative and I'm sick again. That sickness was way worse than COVID, a very, very sore throat. I couldn't swallow. The day that I like really couldn't swallow anymore, and I was like swelling up, like my face was swelling up, my tongue, there's definitely an infection happening. I went to the urgent care center and ended up sitting in an urgent care for four hours to get a prescription for penicillin because I needed to get antibiotics for strep throat. So my COVID turned into strep throat, which is apparently common. It happens where the viral infection kind of sets off a chain reaction in the body and becomes a bacterial infection. I ended up having strep throat.

I still to this moment, as I'm recording this, have strep throat. So if my voice does sound a little bit weird, I've been on antibiotics for four days now. It's helping a lot, but I'm still not 100%. But I'm at least back in the game, head above water, which is nice. My littlest one is still dealing with hand, foot, and mouth. So we went to the doctor today to get her return to school letter or to just get checked out by the doctor really, to make sure that there was nothing still presenting and that she could return to daycare without the chance of re-infecting other kids. It turns out she's not through the infection stage. Like just through that examination, she found a couple little spots that she wasn't quite satisfied were completely gone through their cycle. 

The summary of that is parents, I see you. I am seeing you right now. The story is really meant to just show what it's like to deal with all these things at the same time and still have to run a business, still have to like run your life, still have to give you self-care. That's really where I was going with this is my self-care is falling apart, and I just want to prevent you from having your self-care falling apart when you're in these types of situations. That's my homework, is getting my self-care back on track this week. Though I'm off with my daughter again for the whole week, she's not able to go back to school till next week. But we'll work around that, obviously. We'll get it done.

All of this kind of boils down to – I was like, “What did I learn? What came out of this for me?” This is definitely a challenging time, and we're in a challenging chapter. I'm turning the page of this challenging chapter, and I'm hoping it's almost over. But also, I feel like the universe is inviting me to not hope for it to be over but just to accept that it's here, and this is what is in front of me right now to deal with. So I'm trying to take that invitation seriously and just be with the pain of the moment and know that it's temporary. Everything is temporary. Everything has its course. It just feels slow at this moment, and I hope you can see yourself in the story a little bit, and remind yourself that when you're kind of in the shit, it is just temporary. The other side of that coin is that when you're in the good, it's just temporary. Everything is temporary. I felt called to share that story, just to remind all of us of that.

A couple other things that came out for me of this process of when I really thought about like what I learned was around resiliency. My coach has a wonderful podcast, I'll link it in the show notes here, called The Resiliency Project. Resiliency Project, I'm pretty sure that's what it's called. Cindy Thompson, I've invited her and her husband, Robert, onto the podcast as well. So you'll definitely hear from them soon. But they have a wonderful podcast called The Resiliency Project, and I highly recommend it to my listeners to go listen, to build up your own personal resilience and hear the practices of others. I definitely re-listened to a couple podcasts in the last couple of weeks. Just give me a little bit of motivation maybe or reminder that resiliency is possible and that losing your resilience doesn't mean it's gone forever either.

Another piece that I wanted to share with you is that I really felt or feel like the universe is asking me to look at what's blocked in my body, what's blocked in my mind. This might be another reason for the cosmic 2x4 is saying get your energy worked out. I was saying on my Instagram story a couple of days ago that I was sick, and a lovely friend of mine reached out and said, “Hey, do you want me to do some Reiki for you?” Her name is Heather, and Heather came at the exact right moment for me to receive that treatment. It was beautiful and helped me a lot, so my gratitude goes to Heather as well. That energy flow in the body, that makes things easier. When your energy is flowing freely in your body and your chakras, your energy centers at the different areas of your body are open and ready to receive whatever is there, you can kind of take whatever's happening in stride and take the lumps as you go for it.

That kind of leads me to another piece, which is asking for help. I texted my mom. Of course, you can't really get help when your kids are sick or you're sick these days because you don't want to infect anyone else, and then it screws up their life. So it's very difficult for working parents to get support in times like this. No different for us, where I kind of just venting to the people who would be helping me because I just don't want them to come to me because I would just feel terrible for them to get sick, and then their lives are disrupted. But asking for help in other ways and being vulnerable with the people that I loved or that I love and who care for me and my family in the way that I could accept it. I could accept the help that they were offering.

This is such an important lesson through difficult times is really remembering to ask for help, and those people did. My sister came over one day when it was like, okay, I don't – It was before I knew I had strep throat, so I wasn't feeling well, and I didn't know why I wasn't feeling well. But I couldn't take care of my kids really because I was feeling so sick. She just came at the drop of the hat, even though I kind of got her sick. But she came and supported me in that, which I was very, very grateful for. I texted my mom and was like, “Mom, I need soup. I can't feed myself. I need you to bring me soup.” But it just felt so vulnerable asking. It felt very vulnerable saying, “I just don't know what to say, but I need my mom’s soup.” I want to just let that be an invitation for you to ask for help and ask for your mom's soup or ask for your friend's special cookies or whatever.

The last thing I want to leave you guys with before I sign off here is gratitude. I've been humbled by this experience. Health care is hurting right now. The health care system has just been completely put on the most stressful, intense, high-octane treadmill over the last couple years. I'm just so grateful for all the health care workers, all the urgent care workers, all the EMS, family doctors, nurses, custodians, anybody, anybody in the health care realm who is helping keeping that machine moving. It can't be easy, and I've just been humbled and thinking about the gratitude that I have personally for health care workers during the pandemic and all the time.

The modern medicine that we have available to us is nothing short of a miracle, and I truly am humbled, especially on the other side of it, when I'm feeling better. I've taken some medicine, I've had some energy work, and I've all of a sudden feeling more of myself. I just feel like we take it for granted. We take for granted waking up and having air in our lungs and a thought in our mind. We get bogged down in the stress of it. I know I do. I should speak from the I. I do that. I get totally bogged down in the stress of life and forget to lean into the beauty of these moments and being able to go outside, being able to climb the playground with my kids and just generally thrive. Like not just survive but thrive. The last few weeks, I've been nothing short of surviving. It's truly like surviving is even a stretch I feel, and it just brings me to invite gratitude into my life a little bit more around the times that I am thriving, and I am doing the beautiful things that create my purpose work in life and supporting you beautiful humans and being able to show up in a way that is in service of myself as well.

Again, like that self-care piece, like I'm really feeling called to up my self-care game after this little bout of illnesses. So that's my story. I hope it wasn't too much of a bitch session, and I hope you got something out of it. I am sending so much love, health, and vibrancy to all of you. Thank you again to healthcare workers. There's not enough thank yous. There's really not enough thank yous. I cannot wait to chat with you next week. Bye-bye.

[OUTRO] 

[00:00:22] LA: Thank you for being here with me. If you loved this episode of Positively Charged, please rate and review wherever you get your podcasts. If you could benefit from illuminating your own personal power, please contact me to get a free coaching consultation. Stay positively charged, my friends.                             

[END]