God Does Answer Prayers...

But not always in the way you'd think. Case and point? The terrible awful miserable cold flu that I've come down with.

Before you say "Jessica, you said you were impervious to flu" let me tell you it is NOT the flu. It's just a cold that WANTS to be a flu. It is a virus that was rejected from Flu University. Dropped out of Flu High School.

Basically it means I have all the lovely symptoms of a flu, but no fever. No fever means I'm not overly contagious and also that there are no medications that can help me past the usual ibuprofen and mucinex.

It's really ironic actually because we were playing Pandemic with my family on Sunday. In that game, the person who was sick last gets to go first. We couldn't remember who was sick last because apparently everyone in my family has an immune system of steel. The ironic thing is that that very night I was coming down with this cold. I didn't have an appetite that night but I thought it was cuz my soup was gross. (I thought I had diced tomatoes but I only had tomato sauce. Tomato sauce does NOT make good tomato soup.)

By Monday my sinuses were plugged up but I thought it was just allergies or something. Not that there is anything to be allergic to right now, except snow. I skipped school and half of work MOSTLY because I had a paper due that I forgot at home. By the time I got home, it was time for class so I just emailed the paper to the TA and decided it was too much work to go back to campus. I have a class at 5pm so I didn't want to go to campus a second time and then have to sit around for 4 hours til my next class.

Tuesday, I felt a little nauseous but went to work anyhow. As the day progressed my neck stiffened up and my back started to ache. By the end of work I was pretty sure I had the flu or something because my joints were killing me. I went to dinner anyhow (Tucanos...how could I pass it up?) and by the end of dinner I was ready to die. I went to my parents' hotel and sat in the hot tub which helped, until I got out. At this point I had that creepy crawly feeling you get when you're sick and your skin is super sensitive. I went straight to bed. I had the flu, I was sure of it. It was miserable but hooray! God answered my prayers and I was finally going to get to lay in bed all day and skip school and work without feeling guilty.

Wrong.

Andrew and Alex (my brother in law) gave me a blessing that night and true to what was said in the blessing, though still sick, my aches were gone by 2am and in the morning I had the energy to at least go to class. I still took the day off work because I talk on the phone all day and my throat was not really up to doing that. We took Brianna to the MTC and then my mom took me to the Urgent Care. It's good this happened while my parents were here because with Andrew's work schedule, he wouldn't ever be able to take me to the doctor and I didn't feel like walking.

They swabbed my throat, an experience I haven't had since...at least my freshman year of high school--I had forgotten how unpleasant that is. Then I waited for the results. Well, you already know the results. No fever, no strep, no flu. Just an evil cold that will stick around 7-10 days and pretend like it's a flu. So, I can't miss school and work like I wanted...I probably could except we're poor and somehow I'm a responsible adult...so to school and work I go.

The doctor recommended sitting in a sauna. HA. If only I had one, I'd live in it.

So friends, that is the story of how God answered my prayers and I will probably never pray to be sick again. It is also a story of how blessings really do work because my aches haven't come back. At least not to the extent that I had them before. And as always, God's way is better anyhow because even if I WAS legitimately "lay-in-bed-all-day-drinking-soup-and-skipping-school-and-work" sick, I'd still feel guilty AND I'd be poor. So it's probably better this way. I'm going to go pray to feel healthy now.

...At least I can go first when we play Pandemic =P