In Sickness and in Health: Coming Back from Illness

It’s flu season, which means a lot of us are battling our way through it. *Cough*

I’m coming back from this not-quite ebola that’s going around. It was almost two weeks of being completely out of it. I drank Nyquil from a pilsner glass and washed it down with a coffee or tea constantly, making for a very tired guy that has to go to the bathroom a lot. It only worked because I slept through most of it.

I ran a gut-wrenching 3 miles today on a trail, disgusting, glorious, frustrating and enervating.

That’s running, a marriage. It has good days and bad days.

"In sickness and in health," we say to ourselves at some point, though the people who don’t run think that’s weird.

It is a little weird.

It’s almost like running becomes an exercise in catharsis, a way to work out problems, and the little pains you feel before, during, and after a run are welcome somehow. They let you know you’re alive. Like your spouse berating you for eating all the ice cream. Or saying “do I have to do all the dishes all the time?” Or “of course we can’t afford that.” Those little pains let us know that we’re in a relationship, that we’re growing, because we can feel it. Those aches and pains are Running talking to you.

Coming back from illness does feel like it will take forever, as if you have to start over. You have pent-up energy from not running which is offset by the lack of energy. So you start too fast, just like always, and run out of gas sooner. The sweat is real, however, and it feels like the sickness recedes for a moment, exuding from your pores.

But at least you can exclaim, before the coughing starts again, before those aches return in full force:

“I’m back!”