This picture is a brief description of how I felt most of last week. It started with a slight fever and took a turn for the worse when a bad case of viral vertigo kicked in. I literally could not stand up straight for an entire day. Even the slightest movement in my sleep would wake me up with feelings of motion sickness. A good friend came and helped me to the doctor who gave me a wondrous shot and some heavenly pills to make all the dizziness go away. While there the doctor checked my ears for signs of infection that could be causing the vertigo, but found them to be perfectly fine. The next day however, I woke up with an extremely bad ear ache. The vertigo was slightly better, but the pain in my ear was torture. I went back in to the doc and this time upon checking my ears was told that I had an extremely bad ear infection. The doctors exact words were, "That is the ugliest ear infection I've seen in a long time." My response was, "Awesome" with a slight roll of my eyes...only because a full eye roll would have made me way too dizzy! He sent me home with instructions to start on antibiotics right away. The pressure in my ear was so much that when I tried to blow my nose the following day I felt a surge of pain, heard a high pitched screeching sound, and lots of popping. My ear drum had burst. A minute or two went by where the pain actually eased up a bit from the pressure releasing and draining a bit, but soon the vertigo and pain kicked back in with full force. I finally called my home teacher and asked for a blessing. I am super grateful for the power of the priesthood and those worthy and willing to use that power on my behalf. Since then I have been slowly getting a little better each day. I still have a constant ringing in my ear and waves of vertigo when the dizzy pills wear off, but the way I feel now compared to a week ago is incredible.
Life doesn't stop when you get sick. As this infection was raging in my ear I still had homework to do, appointments to attend, groceries to buy, a house to clean, and an activity to plan. Did I feel like doing any of it? Absolutely not! Wait, that deserves an extra exclamation mark. Absolutely not!! All I felt up to doing was lying on the couch snuggled up in a blanket watching I Love Lucy reruns. My super awesome mom came to my rescue one day as she brought me lunch, did my dishes, and went grocery shopping for me. After that I tried to push through the pain and do the rest of the items on my lengthy to do list the best I could.
We all have days when we don't feel like doing the things that need to be done, but we do them anyway and that is what makes us great. It is when we push through the pain that we truly accomplish something. We give up what we want in the moment, but we gain so much more in the end. This week I found myself doing things I wouldn't normally do. I reached out to others and asked for help (I'm normally really bad at that). I delegated responsibilities and didn't try to do everything myself. I grew stronger as a person because life didn't stop when I got sick.
