Recovering

I haven’t written in awhile because I got very sick over Thanksgiving. There’s some sort of vicious bird-flu virus going around. I know a lot of people have been sick and this thing stays with you for quite a while (when I went to see him, my doc said he’d been sick for three weeks). I missed four days of work last week. When I finally left my house on Friday, I felt like I’d been underwater, underground, or like I’d been hibernating. The pregnancy probably complicated matters in the sense that I couldn’t take very strong medicine and my immunity is probably lower. All I did was sleep. I couldn’t taste things very well so I didn’t eat much and lost weight, but have regained it all in the last few days so no worries there.

At the beginning of my incubation, I was eating whatever I wanted. I’m now trying to go back to my decent-ish eating habits. It’s not hard for me to eat well, usually, but I think I had that “I’m pregnant” entitlement feeling, like I should be able to eat whatever I wanted. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but I would prefer not to get as big as a house. Also, my doc thinks I should try to limit myself to gaining 20-25 pounds. Before I got pregnant, I had some elevated liver enzyme readings, which is a common sign of “fatty liver.” I think this is probably a problem in the West, where we eat too much refined, fatty food, don’t get enough exercise, have high obesity rates, etc. So after the elevated reading, I started working out again and eating better. I eventually lost 18 pounds, which was good, and my liver readings went down. Even though I haven’t gained too much weight so far (six pounds at 15 weeks) I think I need to start paying attention to the quality of my diet because of the liver thing. Apparently, fatty liver can also be a complication of pregnancy.

Anyway, I’ll try not to focus too much on pregnancy and weight talk, since it bores even me sometimes, but it is what’s on my mind a lot lately. The other thing on my mind is queries, queries, queries. I haven’t sent out too many lately since I was sick as a dog, but I have gotten a couple of requests for the full manuscript, which has been an ego boost. Especially one that I received just as I was coming down with my cold. We were looking at our mail after our Thanksgiving trip and I recognized my own SASE. “It’s a rejection,” I told Nate, but when I opened the letter it was a request to send the entire novel. So things are moving along. Wish me luck.