I've recently been ill.
Not just a-little-bit-sniffly ill but all out, cripplingly, repeatedly ill.
In that time I haven't felt much like blogging, or like writing, or working, or flirting or dating or talking or socialising in anyway...
The one time I threw caution to the wind because I was feeling a bit better and went to a friend's house for Sunday Roast I ended up even more ill than I had been before.
My GP now recognises me immediately and doesn't even listen to my chest, look in my mouth or ears or any of that, he justs takes one look at me and writes out a prescription...
Either he's not a good doctor or I have just spent the last 4 weeks looking like a corpse that has been warmed up and wheeled in to his office just in time to die again.
It all started at the doctors actually.
I went for a flu jab; as I have a congenital heart condition I recieved a letter urging me to get the vaccination which I did on xmas eve just before travelling along the snowy roads to home.
The side effects of the flu jab are symptons of flu - which I thought I had.
Xmas was a wash out for many reasons but not least because I was unable to eat my xmas dinner and not able to take even a sip of alcohol.
Two days later when I went to get the train back to London but was too weak to even pack my bag I realised it wasn't just flu like symptons.
What developed was a horrid sickness bug which I think I caught from my housemate and narrowly avoided passing on to all my family.
Thanks to my mum and some super strength Pepto-Bismal I got better and got back to London literally the day before New Years Eve.
I was pleased that I could still go out with my friends, I looked forward to starting the new year healthy and was also just happy to be away from a toilet bowl.
I realised at this point that New Year's Eve is not a lucky time of year for me; I had spent quite a few recent New Year's Eves ill.
Last year I left a perfectly entertaining party early as I wasn't feeling too good and was ill for the first 3 days of 2009.
The year before I had only just recovered from a bad cold when New Year's came round. On a quick trip to the supermarket only 6 hours before I was going to see my friends DJ I picked up my bag of shopping and put my back out. Thanks to some amazing heat patches and super strength painkillers I was able to still go out.
But I couldn't drink or move much...
When you look back at the photos you can't tell I was sober and in pain and I still managed to get a new year's kiss so for the dawn of 2008 all was not lost.
The year before that I had arranged to fly to Belfast with my wingman but I was ill.
My mum, my boss - everyone I knew in fact - told me not to go.
I was determined not to be beaten so full of flu and stubborness I boarded the plane armed with enough Vicks and Lemsip for a small army.
Though I was quite miserable and exhausted from the journey the evening was good fun and on New Year's Day as we headed back to the airport in a taxi we witnessed one of the most amazing sunrises I have ever seen.
Despite everything it felt like I was supposed to be there to see it, snot and all...

So this year I had just recovered and managed to go out, it seemed like I had broken my New Year's curse.
Then I woke up on New Year's Day and the right side of my nose would not stop running and my right eye would not stop watering.
This lasted a few days and when it finally went it was replaced with a god awful head cold which every time I turned too fast or bent down made me feel like all my sinuses would explode then and there.
This went on a couple of weeks and then I got a cold, by this time I had settled into a routine of getting through the week at work and then feeling rubbish all weekend and I was sick of it.
All that energy and enthusiasm you tackle a new year with was wilting.
Worse than wilting it had vanished and replaced with was a bitter frustration.
I felt like a kid that couldn't go play outside.
I said to a friend of mine that I felt defeated.
Maybe it was some small insight into how it must feel to suffer from depression or other mental health illnesses.
I wanted to feel good about myself, to go out and live my life and stop being ill but I had no control over it whatsoever.
And it was the lack of control that was getting to me.
I was trapped into feeling emotionally whatever I was feeling physically.
It wasn't mind over matter it was matter taking over my mind.
Then my head cold developed into a full blown cold and cough.
I had 2 days off work and a weekend to recover but when I went back to work on the Monday by 5pm I was shaking and sneezing again.
The cold and cough returned ten fold and despite ridiculously strong antibiotics from my doctor I was off work for the best part of a week again.
Last week I went back to work and I was feeling much better but was still coughing so I went and got a repeat prescription of the antibitoics which I finish in 3 days. Though I am almost 100 % better - breathing through both nostrils now and only coughing for about an hour in the mornings I feel completely wiped out.
I guess that's what antibiotics do to you and after what will be 14 days on them and over 6 weeks of various illnesses I'm not surprised I feel this way.
I know there are many worse ways to feel and luckily I have an amazing holiday coming up which - as long as I don't catch anything else - will, I'm sure be just the tonic I need to finally feel healthy again.
All this definately hasn't been fun but it has got me thinking.
Health is so important.
Not just big health stuff against big diseases but little health stuff against little illnesses.
I've practically just slept through xmas, New Year and the first 6 weeks of this year.
Why?
Because I must not have been taking care of myself?
Because perhaps I needed a holiday more than I realised?
Or was it because I went to get a flu jab?
I can't help but think that the very thing I thought would prevent this caused it to rain down on me.
It just seems too ironic that by trying to stay healthy I had ended up more ill.
Maybe if I hadn't tried to strengthen my body I wouldn't now be so weak.
As it valentines day I can't help think that it's a bit like tyring to protect yourself from getting your heart broken by never falling in love...your heart still breaks, just in a different way.
Maybe I shouldn't try so hard to protect myself from being ill or for that matter from being hurt.
Perhaps if you worry about something maybe you are just writing an invitation for it to happen.
One thing is for certain after this - I am never going to take my health for granted.
I'm quite fortunate that I never really did before because I was born 2 months premature with a heart condition and the doctors thought I wasn't going to make it.
I don't have to dig very deep to appreciate just that I have made it this far but I'm going to make an extra effort to be grateful for what I have when I have it and not to worry about what will happen next or how I might stop it.

I didn't make a new year's resolution because I was ill and in fact I haven't for the last few years for the same reason but I am going to make one now.
Carpe Diem.
Seize the day.
Not just because one small flu jab means you can't enjoy the day but because one small twist of fate and you might not have even got this day to begin with.
Seems a tall order to remember to be grateful every day but I'm going to try.
After all it can't be any harder than remembering to take your antibiotics every day and I seem to have been doing that just fine...
Stay healthy everyone - in every sense of the word.
x