The long weekend for me was just that… long. I started to feel very unwell. Brett was in Adelaide and each day just got worse and before I knew it I could hardly speak (some may consider this a gift from the Gods).

My throat was the size of Madagascar and I wasn’t able eat pizza on Saturday night with my kids! Something was wrong.

I finally take my horrible-feeling-self to the doctor’s and find out I have a bad case of tonsilitis. He says I need at least two days bed rest, and I bite my tongue to stifle the laughter and just smile politely. I think of the possibility:

Two days bed rest + four young children = never-going-to-happen

And the equation just doesn’t add up. So I think of the probability:

Four young children + Tonsilitis = swallow some cement and get on with things.

As every parent/carer out there knows, when you have children there is no such thing as sick leave. Long gone are the days when you bundle yourself up in your pyjamas and bedsocks, wrap yourself in self-pity and wallow until it passes.

No, no, no… there is none of that. There is get-knocked-down-get-back-up-again, soldier on with Codral, soldier on, soldier on, and swallow a big dose of cement until it comes that time when you can collapse in bed at the end of each day.

This cycle continues in a whirlwind of fuzz until you can finally recover from the whole yucky thing, you’re spat out the other end and life resumes just as it had every other day, it’s just that you are feeling well again.

So… my tonsillitis and I got to thinking about the split round this weekend and what good fortune it is that the players and their bodies get to have a weekend off from the battering ram that is AFL football.

I’m not sure if everyone out there realises what some players need to do week in and week out to take the field and make a contest. Some players can play with an injury for one week, many weeks, months or possibly the whole season!

There is a whole lot of cement-swallowing going on in the AFL. We all know it’s a tough game but it can be tough going for some at the same time.

And then Brett comes home from the Children’s Hospital and tells me a story and a new wave of perspective washes over me…

So little ol’ me and my tonsillitis will suck it up and keep going through the motions because I know there is definitely someone out there doing it a whole lot tougher.

Hayley Kirk

Also-known-as-the-other-half