I can't go on. I'll go on.

Something bad is happening, I'm afraid. Whether I'm in the midst of falling apart mentally or falling apart physically or both remains to be seen, but whatever the case may be, I don't like it.

In the past two entries, I wrote that I've been sick. I've been sick for the entire month of February - not falling down sick - but anywhere from low-level annoying under-the-weather sick to thinking I am going to pass out in the middle of a lecture sick. I've dealt with each day as it's come, and mostly kept up a normal schedule, simply because normalcy is what I crave, and because I've got too many irons in the fire right now to drop the ball. (Wow, how many idioms can I fit in one sentence, lol?) I've chalked a lot of what I'm feeling up to pure exhaustion, the type that seeps into every tissue in your body and lays you out flat when you lie down to go to bed a night. The type of exhaustion where you don't wake up and get out of bed in the morning, you peel yourself, one limb at a time, off the bed. But I've kept going, because that is what people do: they keep going.

Then yesterday, something happened. I woke up feeling terrible, the falling down sick kind of terrible. My daughter woke up with a sore throat but wanted to go to school anyway, and we let her, because she didn't have a fever and because we both had to work. I dropped my son off at daycare, and fumbled my way into work. I answered about a dozen e-mails before I got a call from the daycare saying that my son had a 102.7 degree fever and needed to be picked up. It was 9:00 in the morning. Somehow in the morning chaos, between my own illness and my daughter's illness, my son had been overlooked. It was suddenly too much for me to handle, and I literally just sat there for a good five minutes staring at my computer screen, trying to figure out what to do. My husband, who normally has a flexible schedule, just started a new job, and over the weekend, we had just had a lengthy discussion about him needing to put the pedal to the metal for the next year or so. But I had to teach, so what's a working mom to do?

Eventually, we worked it all out, as we always do, but the process exhausted me, way more than it should have. After coughing my way through a lecture about pathogenic bacteria, I came home to tag team with my husband, who had taken our son to the doctor and then brought him home. By the end of the day, my son, my daughter and I had all been to the doctor, and we all had prescriptions for antibiotics. My kids: strep throat. Me: unknown. As I had sat talking to my NP about what type of antibiotic to try next, she rattled off all the other things I should try to get better: sterilize my toothbrushes, wipe down my computer, take a probiotic, gargle salt water, and so on. Then finally, she asked me, 'Rest? Is there any way you can rest?'

I just looked at her. What a dumb question. Of course I can't rest. Who has time for resting? No one I know. But in that brief moment before I responded to her, it dawned on me that I really need some rest. Not as in, yeah, I should try to take it easy. As in, I really need some rest. As in, something bad is going to happen if I don't. I guess I've been ignoring all signs of my body rebelling against me and demanding rest because I already feel like I'm not doing enough. I've had to start going to bed around 9:30 every night, whereas not long ago, my goal was to be in bed by midnight, and I considered lights out at midnight an accomplishment. I simply can't do that anymore. I go to bed early and sleep late, relatively speaking, anyway. I've always been the type who would rather trade morning rituals for an extra hour of sleep, so I can pop right out of bed at 6:30 and be ready to be out the door in 20 minutes. Giving up those few hours of work every night, which used to be my most productive time, has not been trivial, and dammit, that should be enough. But it's not. For whatever reason, it's not enough. I need more rest, no matter how ridiculous it might seem to me.

So today, I did something I've never done before, and canceled my classes and stayed home with my sick kids (who are now acting totally fine) to try to get some rest. In the seven years at my job, I've been pretty dang sick, my kids have been pretty dang sick, including calls to 911 and hospital stays, and I've never canceled class. This latest bout pales in comparison to other things we've weathered, but somehow I felt some urgency this time. I can't keep going in this state I'm in; something's gotta give. Just trying to keep up my normal, everyday routine is physically sucking the life force out of me, and I'm overwhelmed with this feeling of I cannot do this anymore. I'm not sure if this is my body in pure rebellion mode, or my mind falling apart from stress. Either way, I don't like it. It's unsettling. The idea that it's possible that I'm physically not capable of achieving all the goals I've laid out in my mind is not acceptable.

Of course, given my recent medical history, it's hard not to think of worst-case scenarios. I'm not going to lie. I also, in my brief convalescence yesterday afternoon and today, read from start to finish When Breath Becomes Air, a memoir of a 36-year-old neurosurgeon who dies of lung cancer. While it was a truly amazing reflection on how we must face our own mortality, I'm not sure it was the best choice for me in this very moment in time, when I'm already feeling so fragile emotionally and physically. But the author of the book, Paul Kalinithi, frequently repeated the words of Samuel Beckett to himself, so I'll do the same. 'I can't go on. I'll go on.'