Out of sickness, gratitude

I feel like a damn superhero.

So, last week, I ratcheted up the pressure by professionalizing this newsletter a bit. Then I got sick.

I caught a norovirus from my daughter and have been down for a few days, which is the story of 2025 for my family. Today has been my first day back to feeling like myself.

I’ve had a lot of ideas for what to write about here. But the only thing I’m thinking about now is how glad I am to do basic things like drink coffee and read books to my son without feeling nauseous (for the record, we read seven today, including two Christmas books and one Halloween book).

I don’t know about you, but whenever I get sick beyond a cold (flu, covid, migraines, stomach bug, etc.), I always go through the same pattern: plowing through normal activities, assuming it’ll clear up soon; giving up and lying down “just for a bit”; panicking at the realization my to-do list is cooked; and feeling cloudy existential dread as I wonder how I’ll ever even get out of bed again.

Photo by Rex Pickar on Unsplash

Then something profound happens. I turn a corner, lose the brain fog and become functional. More than functional. I feel like a damn superhero. One day, I can barely walk down the stairs to grab a blanket. The next, I can live life at 1.5x speed, high on the adrenaline of being up and unrestrained. I’m alive!

That’s how I’ve felt today.

I’ve experienced this cycle many times in recent months, a consequence of parenting young children in school and daycare.¹ It’s led me to be hyper-aware of my health — particularly how fortunate I am to have it.

I have no chronic conditions or disabilities. I have no physical limitations. These are easy things to overlook most of the time, unless you’ve already overcome a major health scare. But it really is an incredible blessing just to wake up with all the options of a person who has full mobility and stamina.

I’ve felt miserable often enough lately to appreciate my general good health more than the average person. There’s nothing like sickness, no matter how routine, to reset Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

The other topics I had in mind for this newsletter were downers. I’ll either get to them later or replace them with other ones. Today I did all the things I could hope to do on a random Sunday in March. Nothing else matters.

1. I’ve said it before, but being sick this much has been the single hardest part of parenting for me.