For the last few days, I’ve been sick. Wiped-out, snot-blowing, Dickensian-orphan-hacking SICK.

This has made caregiving more than a little challenging, but with faith, perseverance, and DayQuil, I managed to get through the weekend.

I made it through this whole dank, dark winter without so much as a sniffle, so I should have known this was coming. Because when I get sick, it’s always an event that can stretch on for weeks. It’s just the way it happens with me. I didn’t just get swollen glands as a kid; I got some kind of freakish blockage that required several trips to Mass Eye & Ear and about a month home from school in the 4th grade. I’ve also had two staph infections, and a bout with walking pneumonia in my twenties that pretty well ravaged my immune system. So I try, very hard, not to get sick.

Because I don’t just “get a cold.” It settles deep into my lungs and renders me sleepless for nights on end. Most over-the-counter cough medicines are out of the question for me, given my history. So I just try and stay hydrated, and load up on the rancid, root-y nastiness that are Fisherman’s Friend lozenges.

And yes, friends – I have tried VapoRub on my feet, apple cider vinegar, tea with honey, and just about every other olde-tyme-y remedy out there on the internet. I suspect what I need are just plain NARCOTICS, but this would require asking Coombsie to dispense it for me (I mean, I’ve been sober 11+ years but I still don’t entirely trust myself around the “good stuff,” cough-suppressant-wise) and he’s already managing Mom’s medications.

The last couple of nights I’ve been hacking so loud and so often that I’ve retreated to the couch in the living room, so that at least Coombsie is getting some sleep.

At around 3:30 this morning, on the couch, I had an epiphany. I was thinking about actually going back to bed, because I really, REALLY didn’t want to greet the dawn on the couch. That just struck me as horribly depressing, and I realized how long it has been since I’ve needed to pass out on someone’s couch.

I’d say I had to do this very thing, oh, dozens of times throughout my twenties. I’d get too drunk to manage to get myself home, and so I’d wind up on all KINDS of couches throughout the Greater Boston/Cambridge area. Coworkers, friends, ex-boyfriends…somehow they took pity on me and let me crash on their couches. Some would make them up into some semblance of a bed. Some would just leave me to my own devices. And I’d wake up on these couches, bleary, pained, and vaguely ashamed. Often I’d just tiptoe out as soon as I’d figured out where I was and how to reach the nearest T station (TIP: look for a pile of phone or cable bills for an address, kids!), and figure out the thank you and/or apology strategies after the fact. I don’t look back on my twenties particularly fondly. I did a lot of cool stuff, managed to get two degrees, and I think I thought I was having a good time. But in the 800-watt glare of sobriety, reality, and my forties, I see a young woman running herself ragged, trying too hard, and making herself sick.

And I KNOW that I don’t live that life anymore, and I KNOW that it’s my own couch I’m sleeping on (or attempting to sleep on, anyway), and come most dawns, I don’t have anything to apologize for. I just don’t like to wake up on my couch. I don’t like to start the day from my couch. It’s not natural.