It means also to love, when somebody is scratching you

For the first time in my life I was sick with my husband. And not that he was sick. No. I was sick and he was next to me. And me, I was loved.

It happened to me a few times in my single life to get sick so that from thinking about the need to go to the toilet to do it passed at least half an hour. But so weak, so hot, so covered with an itchy rash and so reluctant to eat as now I have never been before. More than three weeks ago, my first, and I hope the last one, tropical disease happened to me – dengue fever. Caused by a virus transmitted by mosquitoes. Nothing can be done with it except to wait for the symptoms to subside.

But it’s not about that. It is just a background on which something pretty showed up.

It struck me suddenly, pain in my whole body, like a nerve irritation. I’ve tried to wash a few clothes in my hands. I did not manage. I went to bed thinking that it was something with a backbone. Especially that my back ached a lot previous week. A few minutes later, chills. An hour later, the temperature was 39.8.

During this time my husband finished washing clothes, washed the dishes, receive the plumber, then the electrician (because the electricity went out at our home), covered me with sheets (because it was still cold for me), prayed for me, asked how I felt plenty of times, hugged, gave water. He simply was.

Then, when it started to be harder, he helped me to get the toilet. He assisted when I was too weak to take a shower by myself. He changed cold water for head wraps. And when the temperature did not want to fall, he prepared a mattress on which I layed, and he made me wraps all over my body with cool towels. He took me to the clinic a few days in a row and he waited there with me for hours.

Later, when it was a bit better and I started eating very selectively, he went to buy, whatever I felt, that I could try to eat. And he cooked.

On the sixth day, when I thought the worst is over, the itching and burning appeared on the inside of my hands and the bottom of my feet. It was in the evening, and the next day my arms and legs were covered with an itching rash. The first medicines I received, which were supposed to help to silence the itching, did not work very well. After a few days in fever, without food, I had a vision of a sleepless night ahead of me. And then my husband said: “Sleep, as you fall asleep, you will not feel itchy” and began to scratch me gently in the places where it swelled most (because only a small touch was enough to itchy to subside for a moment). So he scratched and I fell asleep.

It means also to love, when somebody is scratching you. And that was not just that. It was almost two weeks of being just for me. It was almost two weeks of everyday choices to love. More. Beloved at that time, I learned how to love from my husband.

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