You are listening to the Take a Break podcast with Rachel Hart episode 117.

Whether you want to drink less or stop drinking, this podcast will help you change the habit from the inside out.

We're challenging conventional wisdom about why people drink and why it can be hard to resist temptation.

No labels, no judgment, just practical tools to take control of your desire and stop worrying about your drinking.

Now here's your host, Rachel Hart.

Well, hello everyone. You know, I have been thinking about my immune system a lot, the best.

Almost six weeks because I have been sick for that long and it's not just me.

My baby has been sick, my husband has been sick. We have all been sick and I cannot remember the last time that I have been sick for such a long period.

It started with a cold back in February that turned into bronchialitis for the baby and then just followed by sneezing and coughing.

I have been sounding terrible. I actually lost my voice twice over this period.

And then last week, my baby got a stomach virus for the first time. I will really spare you the details, but it was not fun.

And then a couple days later, I started seeing spots on his face and his legs and I took him to the doctor and it turns out he caught something called hand foot and mouth disease, which if you have never heard of that before, I had never heard of it before.

It sounded like a bovine disease, but this is not to be confused with hoof and mouth, which is what cows and goats and sheep get.

Hand foot and mouth is something that humans get.

And so my baby came down with it and then guess who came down with her own infection of hand foot and mouth me. I did.

It basically felt like I had strapped for a couple days and I had a really, really high fever.

And I'll tell you that over this period, being sick for this long, I have watched myself slip into several pity parties for myself, but not just for me.

I've noticed my brain thinking a lot about how I wish that my baby was better.

And every time something would happen and he would get something new or spike a fever or start throwing up or I'd listen to that rattly cough that he still has, I would just think, oh, the poor thing, he's just a baby.

I wish he wasn't sick and I would find my brain thinking this over and over. And it occurred to me that if I could wave a magic wand, my brain would choose for him never to be sick.

I would want him to always be healthy.

And I was thinking about this a lot and I started thinking about, is that actually a good thing? Are there benefits of getting sick?

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