Sickly

My mom's parents used to take her and her seven siblings to Mass every Sunday. There's a story in our family about one day when Steve, one of the younger boys, started feeling nauseous during Mass. He started to throw up and my grandmother, the devout Catholic, couldn't bear to have him hurl all over church. So she whipped out her coat and put it under him to catch all the vomit.

She was pretty hardcore.

That's what I was thinking about as I sat in church today. I woke up with a cold, but felt okay right up until the end of Mass. I felt myself getting hot and I started to feel a little nauseous. When I got lightheaded I leaned over to Mike and whispered, "I don't feel good...can we go?" We stumbled out of Mass before the final prayers, and as I walked out I was seeing black spots in my vision. When we got out into the foyer area my knees buckled and Mike caught me. My vision cleared for a minute and I lowered myself into a wheelchair that was sitting in the foyer.

Mike brought me two cups of water from the cooler and after that I got up and we walked home. He held my hand and warned me about patches of ice. He asked if I was pregnant but I just laughed. I felt better in the cool air and once we got home I just layed down and napped for an hour. I woke up and, aside from my cold, I felt as good as new.

I have no idea what the problem was, but I'm not too concerned. That stuff used to happen from time to time, and my doctor said it was probably just dehydration. I drank a couple bottles of water today and even though I still feel crappy with my cold I'm not worried.

Mike, however, has spent the day periodically reminding me that I could just go lay down, or that he'd do things for me. When I remarked that my friend Alec was taking good care of his fiance Elaine while she was sick, Mike said, "I'd take good care of you if you'd let me," in a voice that implied that I should definitely be in bed with a cold compress on my forehead.

I know I coddle Mike when he's sick, and whenever he has asthma I watch him like a hawk. And I imagine that if I saw him collapse in church I'd hold him in bed for the rest of the day. But it does make me wonder how I'd react or how he'd react if the other person got seriously sick.

Hopefully we won't find out.