When we get sick, what we want is a fast recovery. People hope and pray for our speedy recovery. Well, who doesn’t? I want to recover very, very soon…as soon as now…at this very moment. I’ve wanted the fastest recovery for more than two weeks now!

But then, I was made more aware of my condition yesterday. And a reality had hit me so bad. However, I’ve still been praying for a miracle: that one day, I’d wake up and get up from our bed and everything is perfectly back to normal.

The community nurse coordinator who’s been assigned to me came to our house yesterday. She assessed the help and assistance that I need. She explained that a team of therapists are coming in the next few days.

This coming week, a physiotherapist will start to come to help me regain the strength of my body. An occupational therapist will also come to help me get back to performing my daily tasks. A speech and language therapist may also come to help me overcome my swallowing difficulty. PLUS someone will come over several days a week to assist me in showering and in other personal cares — that will include combing my hair, clipping my fingernails/toenails (yes, I need someone to do these things for me nowadays). I will receive all these help and assistance for FREE. I’m still blest, ain’t I?! Yes, I am sincerely very, very thankful! ❤

I have been reassured that I will recover from this. As to how long this will take? Now I know that only God knows. I know I will recover from this. However, there’s one thing that I learnt from my conversation with the nurse yesterday.

She explained to me about a very common characteristic of people with GBS. We want to get things done…soon. We want to fast forward everything. We want the results now. We are somewhat perfectionist. We are the kind of people who find it hard to step back and wait. We do not know when to stop. And that is what I need to learn as I am on the road to recovery: know when to stop. Know when my body can no longer push. Know when my body can no longer handle what my mind has set to accomplish. Perhaps this has been something that I should’ve learnt all these years!

This is not the only time when I got so sick like this. In 2012, I was even admitted in the ICU but the doctors couldn’t find anything abnormal in any tests until that very intelligent doctor said that I was just depressed. Thanks to him for that! Very, very helpful! With all honesty, I wasn’t. But I was exhausted… very, very exhausted — physically and mentally. I even had a fever and I was thinking if I should still go to one of my students before my mother found me unconscious on the floor. Before I got sick then, I was working as a home tutor from seven in the morning until eleven at night. Yes, I was working that long because I loved what I was doing. I only had a total of an hour to rest for my meals in a day and perhaps three hours of sleep at night because I had to prepare the lessons/sample tests for my students. As far as I can remember, that was a week before the exams and project submissions of my students. I was so pressured then because most of them were also pressured to achieve something. And I wanted them to achieve what they aimed for.

This time around, exhaustion was what I had been feeling before I got sick. Imagine being pregnant for almost 39 weeks while still looking after a toddler then a childbirth then an operation to remove the retained placenta from my uterus and breastfeeding while still looking after a toddler. And within a month, I was back to doing some household chores, which my husband might have never recognised that I actually did them [😂]. Spring came and I tried to do some spring cleaning and to re-organise the house (yes, I was too stubborn to push a couple of heavy cabinets around the house despite being asked by many to take things easy as I had just given a birth three or four months ago). Plus the fact that I was still taking my two boys to Playcentre. Then the holiday season came. And during all those months, I did not give any attention to what my body was already telling me. There was even a time when I was only made aware of my high temp (39C) when I was also checked by the paramedics who attended to my sick toddler then. Yes, I didn’t even know that I was sick then because I was focused on taking care of my sick child.

All these might have triggered my immune system to become overactive. So I’ve written all of these now to remind me in the future.

Yes, this should serve as a reminder to myself of what the nurse told me yesterday. “Learn when to stop. There will be times when you’ll feel that you can do more and you’ll do it. But then the next minute or next day, your weakness will have another flare-up. Then you’ll wonder why you are weak again today while you’re already strong yesterday. Then you’ll feel bad and sad because you think that you’re not recovering well. But we need you to be in a good mood all the time so you’re always motivated to do your exercises. You have to remember: you will recover but recovering from GBS means Getting Better Slowly.”