Writing those words I wondered if readers of my blog from anywhere other than the UK or Ireland would know the expression “Down in the Dumps”.  My description of it is a feeling of being down, a certain grade of depression, not a bad mood as such, just feeling anything but positive.

I had a night like this on Sunday night.  As you know from my last post, my Mam had been unwell with a chest infection and when we had returned from hospital, my Dad was also unwell.  After a week of heavy antibiotics, they were both recovering well over the Easter weekend.  I on the other hand was starting to come down with something, probably I had picked something up from them.  Of course I am strong enough to fight it off in time.  It was tough going, feeling so rough myself and looking after things here at home and looking after my parents.  There is just me, it had to be done.

The Tuesday after Easter Dad started to become unwell again, the chest infection had returned so a different, heavier dose of antibiotics was started.  Two days later Mom also came back down with a chest infection and another dose of liquid antibiotics commenced.

So a week later, both were once again over the infections, the antibiotics had left a few side effects but nothing we couldn’t handle.  On the Friday my boyfriend came over for the weekend, we hadn’t seen each other this time for five weeks and cover was in place so that we could go out for a late lunch nearby.  We were gone less than two hours and in that time Dad had suffered a weird kind of turn.  Tummy cramps, heat, sweating, freezing cold and weakness.  It’s no wonder I am stressed when I go out yet I know I need to go in order to have some “me” time.  He looked awful.  When I think about it, he looked worse than when I seen him have the cardiac arrest in 2009 and that was bad. Thankfully our Doctor’s surgery was open and the on call Doctor came to visit. All checks were good, we had to put it down to after affects of the antibiotics. He rested for the rest of the afternoon and was back to his usual self later that night.

The following Tuesday a sore throat appeared…by Thursday Dad sounded once again completely congested.  He spoke to the Doctor on the telephone Thursday night and a Doctor called to see him on Friday.  Again, all check ok, this was put down to a viral infection so no antibiotics this time and slowly this has started to improve over the last week.

Sunday evening I was feeling so tired out, the stress of the last four to five weeks was catching up with me.  I ached.  For a couple of days it felt like I was trying to shrug off a heavy load from my back.  By Sunday it felt like I was carrying a rucksack full of stones, I had chest ache, arm ache, neck ache…and I was tired.  We got to bed around midnight and the last time I looked at the clock was 00:50 am.  1:25 am Mam decided to get up. She wanted to come downstairs for tea, she had no intention of going back to bed.  So that was that, I was up again and downstairs in the lounge with Mam. Tea was made and drank and around 4.30 am Mam fell asleep in her favourite chair.

I couldn’t chat, I couldn’t do anything much, I felt so down, so tired out, so desperate, so alone, my sparkle wasn’t even a twinkle, it was like a dying ember in a fire.  I’d had it. I wasn’t even in the mood for the Twitters…never a good sign.  I prayed and prayed. It works for me.

I had thoughts of blogging my thoughts but I decided that my mood was just too Black and that just isn’t me at all.  I did however catch up on reading some of your wonderful blog posts, so diverse, so interesting and so calming to read.  It was just the right thing to do.  I fell asleep around 6:30 am and although I woke around 9 am, my mood had lifted. My favourite and most apt bible verse in my head…

I decided to pull my sparkle up from my ankles and get myself moving.  I got myself ready and I started the Couch to 5K programme again.  I’m starting from the beginning and building myself up, it has been 18 months since I last ran.  I felt so much better for going outside, walking, running, listening to music, it did me the world of good and it must have loosened up my body as the pains and aches were all but gone.

On the Friday afternoon, my close friend Sharon had called to visit.  Usually we would go out for food but as Dad was unwell I cancelled the carer and we stayed home.  We had such glorious weather last week, sunshine and heat, we sat in the garden for an hour, drank Prosecco and ordered Pizza.  Such simple things yet it felt like a holiday for me.

Not really good for the healthy eating but I haven’t been too good at that recently and sometimes I think a little of what you fancy does you good.

Thank you for reading yet another war and peace of a blog post!

Pictures are either mine or via Pinterest.

With Sparkles until the next time…