Posts tagged as:

illness

Leviathan Ciphers

11 January, 2011

in at home,commentatrix,in Aotearoa,we are family

The first days of acquiring the practical knowledge of maternity were very much akin to drawing out Leviathan with an hook, a process that felt all the more surreal by the fact of having been delivered of a non-metaphorical Leviathan so very recently, whose nearby tininess belied the effort. Everywhere were signs: signs that displayed policy, signs that explained how policy is to be implemented, health-promotional signs that gave instructions that reflect the policy. All of this to keep the baby floating above that netherland known as Failure to Thrive, whose abyss we sensed beneath the bilibed and whose name was never spoken.

[click to continue…]

{ 3 comments }

Let’s hear it for the boy

16 May, 2009

in at home,we are family

I find it very hard to take sick leave; even to admit that one is electively staying at home seems to be to take the attitude of Mr. Charles, above. However, the head cold that has this week felled me saw me spend Friday in a condition largely similar to the pictured layabout, only sicker.

Physical illness usually plays havoc with my mental health, too, but aside from some wandering anxiety I have been feeling okay. Indeed, the sorrowful torpor that I expected to take me down for a fortnight or more lasted almost exactly a week, then ceased, giving me a couple of healthful days before this virus made its home in my head. So swift was the former’s duration that I felt somewhat embarrassed that I wrote about it. What might have changed, then, to make my mental take-down that much shorter?

[click to continue…]

{ 4 comments }