Lots and lots of people have been super helpful and lovely during this 8 month (and ongoing) period of illness for me. In this blog, however, I would like to introduce 4 of my
In no particular order.....
This is Gaby. Gaby is 70 years old and recently bought an electric powered tricycle so she can ride down the rivulet track wearing a helmet that looks like a watermelon. She goes to the local cafe to pick up their coffee grounds and compost, which she feeds to the monster silverbeet in her garden, that is taller than her standing on a step ladder.
Gaby has done food shopping for me, has made me magic soup with vegetables from her garden, and comes around regularly to give me head massages. Thank you Gaby
***
This is Millie. When times are tough, Millie puts on her sparkly pink and yellow crises management outfit and goes out to meet the challenge. She likes planting both metaphorical and literal asparagus, watching her free range guinea pigs, drawing pictures, telling stories and devising a manifesto for a more awesome world.
Millie is the leader of the asking for help cheer squad. She is also one of the chief cfs understanders, because her husband Garth has had it for 8 years. Even though Garth can get very tired, and grumpy when he tries to fix his CFS by eating only cabbage for weeks at a time, she married him anyway. Millie reckons that if we all were less stubbornly independent and asked for help more, it would allow our friends and neighbours to be generous to us, which would give us all warm fuzzies, and we'd all live in stronger better communities. She has also brought me vegetables from the farmers market, patted my head and always cheers when I ask for help.
Thank you Millie :)
***
This is Qug. What Qug really likes doing is rowing her boat in the tanniny waters of south west Tasmania, looking for her favourite birds and pulling into small sheltered beaches to admire the driftwood and sea beans. She also loves posts cards, membracid tree-hoppers, copepods and pet rats.
When Qug was a kid in the 1980s, her mum had CFS. This was back when it was called the yuppy flu, and lots of people thought you were just pretending to be sick because you were lazy or wanted attention. During these years Qug and her mum lived mainly off bottled fruit and yoghurt.
Qug is the Number 1 bringer of quality children's literature to my bedside, and was the lead-coordinator of the league of helpers and headpatters when I was bed bound.
Thank you Qug :)
(Qug's mum got well after 10 years of fatigue and now enjoys a life full of singing in choirs and snorkelling.)
***
This is my mum. She likes gardening, knitting things for her grandchildren, orienteering and teaching orienteering to school kids.
Mum brings me home made chicken soup, low-carb muffins and many other miscellaneous things from the outside world like brocolli and avocados. She does my laundry for me, she took away all the grotty, greasy tea towels in our house and made them properly clean again, and she bought me new underpants and threw out my old ones with out asking, because she is a mum. She changes my bedsheets, and she does my job in my share house far better than I ever did (cleaning the bathrooms). She drives me to the doctor and is all all round good mum.
Thanks mum :)
***
And thank you all heroes of chronic fatigue, big and small :)
No comments:
Post a Comment