My Physical Trials

My Physical Trials

I wish I could be healthy. Feel healthy. Have a normal amount of daily energy.

When we moved to Japan I was sick. Unbeknownst to me I had a great deficiency of vitamin D.

It caused me to have headaches and be drained of energy. To feel bad all over my body. I would spend 1/3 of my week in bed.

When I realized it wasn’t depression but something physical I did eventually go to the med clinic for evaluation. The vitamin D pills they gave me helped. If I missed a single day, however, I felt it. I would feel sick.

Despite getting an hour of walking in the sun a day with my friend Misty before she moved away, I was sick. We walked for months but it didn’t help me get better.

I have been on the vitamin D pills this whole year. It is now December. I still have to take them daily and I wonder if I always will?

These days I get sick about twice a week. Sometimes it’s worse than others. Yesterday was a particularly bad day. I woke up with no energy and feeling lowsy. I washed dishes in the morning, hoping waking up more would help me feel better but I just felt worse. So I laid in bed watching tv for a few hours.

After lunch I went grocery shopping. If laying in bed doesn’t help feel better then why stay there? That trip wasn’t fun and didn’t help. So, I went back into bed. Miserable.

Most sick days I feel better before dinner. Atleast mostly better.

Yesterday it lastly the entire day. I went to bed that night still feeling sick. I had missed choir practice to rest.

The next morning I had just a hint of leftover headache. I felt pretty good. It always lingers a little when I have a worst day like that one.

When I am in the midst of misery I search for ways to get rid of the pain and never gain it again. If I knew the cause I could fix it? That is, if the cause is more than just vitamin D deficiency. Which I often wonder about.

Perhaps it’s something in the modern food? Maybe if I cut to a completely healthy diet I would be healed? Sometimes I wish I had the self control to follow through with that idea. It is very hard these days to live a life of just healthy food because the stores mostly have bad foods or foods that have additives and preservatives.

After being sick, when I feel well again, I am so happy I want to make up for the time lost. I get back to the point of feeling so good that I want to workout, catch up on my to do list, clean the house, volunteer outside the home...and...push myself too much. But I know that when I push myself too hard I end up right back in bed; sick.

So I try not to do that. Somedays I feel so good that I do push myself too much. I push myself to be as active as a normal person. Why can’t I be a normal person?

Most of my life I have stressed about my weight and how much fat I have had on my body.

In the past year I have learned to ease up on myself. Turning 36 helped. Instead of seeing myself as a 25-35 year old and having expectations for myself on what my 25-35 year old body should look like, my mind made a huge switch. I became 36. And realized that I have a great body for a 36 year old.

It’s hard to worry about your weight and spend so much of your life unable to push yourself physically to stay fit. I know my body isn’t “fit.” I spend too much time in bed.

I could focus completely on my intake; the food I consume. But my true love is food (food and my husband...tied). I love food that makes my tongue dance and fills my brain with happiness. And when I am sick in bed I have no will power to just eat healthy. I eat what makes me happy.

These are my struggles. And even though my physical and emotional health is improved from when I moved to Japan, it is still far from ideal.