Bad Luck…or Bad Karma?

Post by Stephanie @ Mommy, For Real

I have been unimpressed with my luck these past few months. In general, this past year has not been our family’s healthiest. From mastitis to bronchitis to sinusitis, chances are if it ends in “itis” I’ve had it. As a chronically sleep-deprived mom of two girls, perhaps my immune system has finally thrown in the puke-stained towel. 

Things started looking up in February: I weaned my toddler, who promptly began sleeping through the night, and my husband and I planned a trip to the mountains. Alone. As in- without the children. My parents were generous enough to offer to babysit, and my mind began swimming excitedly with all the fun things we would do on our romantic Valentine’s Day getaway. 

The last time we took this trip, I was pregnant, exhausted, and nauseated at the sight and smell of pretty much every type of food. This year I’m going to eat and drink everything I want! I bragged foolishly. As luck would have it, the day before the trip I wound up with an ear infection. As I sat crying in the doctor’s office hours before we were planning to leave, my doctor informed me that there was a solid chance my eardrum would rupture on our drive up the mountain. To which I replied charmingly, “Fuck.”

The cocktail of drugs I was taking, including antibiotics, decongestant, ibuprofen, probiotics, and antihistamines were no match for the puny Dulcolax I brought along. My digestive system was toast. I looked like I was five months pregnant. Oh, irony, you old bitch! One night after dinner I cried because I felt so full and miserable. Not to mention the fact that I couldn’t hear through my left ear, save for the constant ringing.

Two weeks later, I was still plagued by the partial deafness and ringing, but I was bound and determined to go out for a night on the town with my girlfriends. As luck would have it, I got food poisoning. It lasted for five days and included fever, aches, and chills along with a celebrity-grade colon cleanse. 

As I sat in my doctor’s office yet again, and he told me it could take ten days to recover, this time I laughed instead of cried. He inquired as to whether I would like a rectal exam to rule out God-knows-what, to which I replied charmingly, “Fuck that.” (I should write a manual for how to be your physician’s favorite patient)

Here’s the thing: over the past three weeks, my poor husband has been forced to take over most of the cooking, cleaning, and childcare tasks. Prior to my illness, I wrote a snarktastic blog post titled, “I Am From Venus, Your Head Is Up Uranus: Six Differences Between Men and Women,” in which I lamented the ways in which he functioned as a subpar household management partner. In spite of his solid efforts during the past week, including time taken off work to shuttle the girls around while I clutched the toilet, I thought I would go ahead and publish this post anyway. 

Which begs the question…did my bad luck just turn into bad karma? Perhaps while I was busy whining, that beautiful purveyor of justice Karma took a big bite out of my ungrateful ass.