I'm Still Alive...

.....just barely. Today has been the first day in a week that I have been able to stay out of bed for more than an hour at a time (with the exception of the 6 excruciating hours I spent at the Maniilaq House of Horrors Health Center). I had a brief relapse yesterday and spent the entire day, once again, in bed. I was feeling a bit more chipper today. I actually got on my 4 wheeler and took poor Kaija for a run. She had some serious cabin fever.

It didn't take me long to wear out but I needed to stop at the store before I went home. A few people had heard I was sick and asked how I was feeling...expressing concern from as far away as possible...hahaha...I felt like a leper. I don't blame them really...that was the sickest I have been in probably 10 years. I think it almost matched the time about 10 years ago when I was living in a cabin on the Noatak river with my then husband and his family. I was down and out for a week. I was sooo sick and I was too weak and the weather too gnarly to travel to town. My mother-in-law spent the night rubbing my chest with some concoction she made out of kerosene and vegetable oil, force feeding me stinkweed tea and praying that I wouldn't die. She still mentions that night to this day. She likes to make it sound way more dramatic than it actually was....I don't think I was as close to deaths door as she tells it, but I was pretty sick.