My Thanksgiving With Bronchitis: Doing A Holiday With Sickness

Updated 11/23/2021

So you got sick and it’s Thanksgiving

So you did all you could to pace your activities and prevent illness and symptoms flares. Yet it happened anyway. You got sick and it’s Thanksgiving. It will be okay. First, recognize your angry, frustrated feelings and acknowledge the situation. Have a cry if it helps, then determine to make the best of the situation for yourself and your family. In the next sections I share how I adapted to having bronchitis in order to still have a Thanksgiving dinner. The last section contains my 5 best tips for coping with illness over a holiday.

Thanksgiving With My Friend “Bronchitis”)

Well here we are in the United States one day away from Thanksgiving 2017, and I have bacterial bronchitis. I’ve been trying to fend off a cold since Friday evening. Unfortunately, all the vitamin C, fluids, and breathing treatments did not stop the inevitable chest congestion.  For once I would like to get a cold and not have it turn into an infection, or cause a major asthma attack!

Thanksgiving Food

Okay, I’m done complaining. Now on to how to get Thanksgiving dinner on the table with no energy. Thanks to my lovely, eldest daughter who saved our stuffing recipe to Dropbox, I can actually make the stuffing. Youngest son drove me to the grocery store, and pushed the cart to help me get groceries yesterday.

Why, you ask, would I be shopping three days before Thanksgiving? I needed to wait until my recent deposit to the bank was available.

Right, back to Thanksgiving. I’m in charge of making stuffing. This was not well thought out, because I cannot tolerate wheat at all. I definitely do not want a stomach ache on Thanksgiving Day. I planned on making a small gluten-free version for myself. Oh, the well made plans of mice and women!

So now I have to decide whether I have the energy to make two batches of stuffing. Yeah, right. I’m also kind of queasy at the moment. The thought of all that rich food is nauseating

My second son is doing the turkey, and my two daughters are handling the other side dishes. My parents are bringing dessert. Thank God for the ability to divide the work, because this lady CANNOT do it all. My youngest is getting recruited to help me chop celery and onions tomorrow, when he has an early dismissal from school.

I had wanted to make myself a gluten-free pie, so I’m not tempted to eat my mom’s pie. If I have the energy, I’ll do that tomorrow as well. If not, I’ll have to eat cranberry sauce for dessert and that might be all I want. That, and a bite of turkey.

Cleaning

This section should seriously just be a bunch of rolling-on-the floor-laughing emojis! I wish I knew how to get an emoji plug-in, but I don’t have the energy for that. LOL! I’m doing well just writing this post. You know that Fly Lady schedule I told you about last week, well being sick on top of chronic illness has made that baby crash and burn.

My kitchen floor is seriously about to walk itself out of the house! It hasn’t been mopped in so long, I cannot even remember when it was last done. Add in that two adult sons have been doing car repairs, and a bathroom sink replacement last weekend, and well I have a mess in both the kitchen and the upstairs bathroom. That sink is still not operational BTW. The water supply lines are too short and they still haven’t connected up the drain pipe.

 So if you don’t want to use baby wipes to clean your hands, you better go to the basement bathroom people. My kids won’t mind. My perfectionist father will. Sorry, dad. This is real life. 

So How Do You Do a Holiday When Acutely Ill?

1. Delegate, delegate, delegate!
2. Go with the flow. You can’t change reality!
3. Just don’t do______________ (fill in the blank).
4. Use paper plates and store bought food if you can afford to.
5. Reschedule your celebration to another day if nothing else works.

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That’s all the sage wisdom and advice I have for you this week. Keep trucking dear readers, and Happy Thanksgiving! Kathy

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P. S. : It turned out to be a pretty nice Thanksgiving all the same. 

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