Friday, January 30, 2009

Learning to Listen to My Body

Damn being human! Why can't we be robots or at least have a way of engineering the better more efficient parts?

Our bodies are very special and we must take care them as best we can because they are the only one we're gonna get. I swear, I try really hard to take care of my body. I eat right, I exercise, I keep it clean and I rest it. But I also push it. In my opinion, I don't push my body nearly as hard as other people around me. But apparently I don't know when too much is enough.

What I don't get is that I sleep a lot. Being a Peace Coprs volunteer, I'm subject to a 9-5 schedule and I take full advantage of that by getting between 8-12 hours of sleep on week nights. It's awesome. It's not the sleep that's so much the problem, it's how hard I push my body physically when I'm awake. I walk to work and back each day which adds up to around 2 hours of walking a day. At work, I play with mountains of little kids which is exhausting physically, mentally and emotionally. I'm known to party as hard as I work and I push my body to it's limits when I exercise.

This is how I got mono last year. My body had been screaming at me for weeks to take it easy, that it was on it's last leg, so to speak. After a month of being completely knocked off my feet, I promised myself I would take better care or my body and respect it's limits in second year in Peru. Coming back to my Peace Corps life after medevac was tough. It was a slow recovery and I didn't start to feel like my true self again until 3 months after the fact. I climbed the Inca trail and felt pretty good. I started exercising again. But then it started to snow ball. Summer arrived and with it all the out door activities that I had been missing for 8 months.

I started feeling tired and run down after a month of fun in the sun, but I couldn't bring myself to decline a single invitation to go throw the frisbee or swim in the ocean. Finally last weekend I said I wasn't going to go out. My friends were aghast. They wouldn't except it and demand I go out. I asked them to understand that I was still vulnerable from the mono and I needed to take care of myself so I didn't relapse. They weren't the most supportive, so I half to easy.

Sure enough the following monday, I was knocked off my feet again by a terrible fever. I wasn't permitting my body to fully recover, so my body was forcing me. I lay helpless in bed for a few days unable to do anything. I didn't leave my house for 72 hours, maybe a record for me in Peru. I strangely wasn't mad that I was sick, I knew I had it coming. So after a week of being sick as a dog, I'm going to attempt another low key weekend.

1 comment:

Lili said...

Ali,
I hope you are feeling better. No more mono!!!! love you. Mama