Xmas.
A time when we get together with our closest and drink and eat and be merry.

I hope that’s how it is for all of you.

I on the other hand am at home alone.

I have been crippled with some weird illness since the day after D-Other Girl was born. Which means that instead of coming home with a lovely little girl, D-Missus was having to deal with a newborn, a two year old and one very big baby.

In the past seven days I have probably slept more than the new born.

I don’t really know what I have. It basically started out as what I thought was a severe ear ache, but my ear was fine. It was experiencing “relected pain” from somewhere else. A gland, it turns out. I only just started eating again, so I went several days without eating. I had days worth of fevers. Vomiting. 24-hour constant pain. Which pain killers did nothing for except partially paralysing my face and making me sound like a retarded version of the Godfather.

During the worst of the fever I got pretty delusional.
I kept seeing vivid faces in the curtain patterns. Like Yellow Brick Road Elton John. And then I saw Sponge Bob Square Pants. And I thought, wouldn’t it be funny if he instead had tea-cosy pants? And I laughed and laughed and laughed and realised that I was possibly experiencing the saddest motherfucking moment of my life.

The doctors don’t seem to think it’s contagious, which is comforting. But they also didn’t shed any light on what they did think it was and just gave me painkillers and antibiotics and told me to go home and sleep.

Possibilities that have gone through my head include the mumps and some brain eating disease. I figured the mumps were a possibility seeing as my genitals fell off days ago.

I even went to the dentist to make sure it wasn’t a wisdom teeth issue. It wasn’t. And perhaps if I’d bothered to go to a dentist some time in the past 14 years I would have already known that all of my wisdom teeth came through long ago, without a problem.

This is probably the sickest I have ever been.

But what really pisses me off is that I haven’t been able to be there for D-Missus in her first week at home after giving birth. That I haven’t been able to spend quality time bonding with the baby. And that I haven’t been able to make sure that D-Girl didn’t feel left out with the new addition to the family.

I even cried the other night. That’s like the first time since … my pet possum died when I was like 12. I was watching TV and they were having a send off for a woman who had been presenting the news for almost as long as I have been on earth and I found it all very emotional and started that tear stuff, and then I realised I wasn’t really crying about some hot 99-year-old news presenter, but that I was crying at the abject futility of my own situation.
And that’s when I realised that clearly someone had accidentally given me hormone replacement pills instead of the fucking antibiotics that I had asked for.

As it is D-Missus is doing great. D-Other Girl is doing great. She’s pretty much sleeping through the night already and has the sweetest temperament. D-Girl doesn’t seem phased by the new addition at all and even seems to be looking out for her already.

I am getting better. I started eating again yesterday. I went cold turkey on the painkillers today and, while still in pain, the pain is not as painful as the pain in the past. Which was painful. But probably not as painful as other people’s pain. Some people have given birth, for example. But it is my pain. And I have decided to call it Susan.

OK, losing it…

I even got along to the in-laws this morning to watch D-Girl open her presents. And watch her help open everyone else’s presents. Two-years-old really is such a fun age.

But I’m at home now as everyone else noshes down on Christmas lunches and dinners.

But don’t cry for me; I have tap water.

Actually I feel heaps better after just writing that.

This is the first time I’ve been to the internet in days.
I hope that helps explain why I haven’t been visiting or emailing any one.

I want to wish you all a great Christmas.

I have learned that the greatest gift of all
Is good health.

(Also, don’t ever try and tell someone who just gave birth that you’re in a little bit of pain…)