Get a Clue?

Well just in case all you faithful readers hadn’t noticed, I’ve been out of the loop of posting to my blog for about the last 3 weeks.  And “why” you ask me?  (awhh, you’re so caring)  The simple truth is that I didn’t get a clue from my own last post about needing more sleep.  Yes, that was the demise of me. 

I kept going and going and going.  Like the little Energizer bunny…. without adequate food or sleep, or barely a moment to answer the call of nature.  I just worked until I literally dropped off my computer chair, and got up in the morning and started the craziness all over again.  And so it went…… until!!!   I caught a cold, which in my rundown condition, escalated with lightening speed into pneumonia.  Even still I kept telling everyone that “I was getting better”.  Hah!

My husband phoned me during his drive home from the deer camp, and told me that if I wasn’t better by the time he got home he was making an appointment for me with my physician.  Well guess where I was that next Monday afternoon?  You got it!  In the doctors office getting the diagnosis along with three different prescriptions to help me to recover quickly.  Let me say “hah!” one more time.

I don’t know how you are with medications that are supposed to make you feel better?  But for me I sometimes wonder, in fact quite often,  if the side effects of the medicines are even worsethan the sickness itself.  I not only now was suffering with the all that goes with a serious bout of pneumonia, but I also had the nasty side effects of a steroid “puffer” I was required to inhale twice a day.  And a bronchial/lung liquid medication I also was to inhale with a Nebulizer machine that made this liquid into a mist, four times a day.  And lastly an antibiotic, once a day.  Of these three, it was only the antibiotic that actually cured me and without any side effects, I think?  The other two were so horrendous that I just wanted to roll over and die from their side effects, even tho the purpose of them was to help me ‘feel better’ while I was healing. 

The steroids, for those of you that have never had the experience, made me shake and vibrate like I was in a deep freeze for the last year.  Honestly!  I didn’t even answer the phone because my jaw quivered so badly that I sounded like someone with a stuttering problem.  My own children didn’t even recognize me if I answered when they called.  So this was not a ‘good-look’ for clients to hear when they called me regarding business information and questions.  

I also missed out on a Happy Thanksgiving dinner because I was too sick to really enjoy it.  I saw how that affected my family too.  They didn’t have mom doing the all the fussy things I usually do for our holiday feast.  Although my husband jumped in and cooked the meal as best he could, it just wasn’t the same…… for any of us.

So I say to all you work-a-holics and over-achievers like me, take a hint from the person who knows the most about you.  YOU!  Yes, it is only you yourself that knows when you’ve had enough and have seriously pushed yourself beyond your own limits.  Stop!  Please don’t try to do just that little bit more.  It’ll become a mouse maze you can’t get out of.   It’ll be the addiction  you can’t kick.   It will only lead you to your ruin.  And what will be your reward in the end?   Loss.   Loss of revenue due to lost time at your work.  Lost clients.   And most of all, the loss of the momentum and the great feelings/energy you had when you were well and at the top of your game. 

Here is one of the greatest Secrets to Life, and yet a very simple one:  Take care of you!  No one can ever replace you.  No one can do what you do, nor in the same way that you do it.  There is only one “you”, so take care of yourself the very best that you can.