I was sick all weekend and am just this morning feeling like I have turned the corner back to the world of health and accomplishments.

It’s amazing how overwhelming life is when you’re sick. I would lay on the couch and picture the healthy people of the world going about their day–loading groceries in their cars, making dinner for the family, shoveling snow–and wonder how they could possibly do these things. Only a superhero could accomplish such wonders! But yesterday I made the bed and did laundry, and today I see that a grocery store trip is not out of the question so I guess I’m basically a superhero now too.

I always see people talking on the Internet about the “man cold” and how their husbands turn into giant, nonfunctional babies when they get sick. In my house it is the opposite. When I am sick the world stops turning and my entire to do list gets ripped up and burned. I am unwilling to push myself at all. Meanwhile, my husband will still shovel snow with pneumonia. He’ll onboard large doses of Sudafed so that he can make it to happy hour with a client. I’m not sure I have ever seen him take a real sick day with the exception of when he was recovering from his various eye surgeries.

I do feel badly about being such a baby when I’m sick, but honestly I don’t see the point in pushing myself when I’m already miserable. The kids can eat cereal for dinner two nights in a row, literally nobody cares. Appointments can be rescheduled. There were many years when the kids were little that I could not opt out of the very physical work of caring for small children while I was ill. And someday I might have pneumonia but still be forced to flee a war zone or nuclear meltdown. And I bet then I’ll wish I had taken it easy when I could have! If I have the luxury of shutting down 99% of my life for three days while I’m sick, why shouldn’t I?

Of course, I am prone to sinus infections, so the end of the battle with the virus does not correlate with the end of the entire war. Yesterday I started up with Sinus Infection Avoidance Protocol Level 3. This is the lowest level of my sinus infection avoidance strategies and calls for twice-daily use of the neti pot and Flonase. Level 2 calls for regular dosing with NSAIDs, and Level 3 brings Mucinex to the table. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.