What do you do when you’re too sick to be in public for very long, the gym is a cesspool of sweaty germs, it’s too cold to be outside, and your doctor tells you to exercise anyway?

Engage in retail therapy!

My pulmonologist recommended that I get 30 minutes of exercise a day, in 5 minute intervals. This order coincided with the deposit of a nice fat federal tax refund. There was a list of things I have been waiting to purchase for my home, and I decided that shopping would be the best way to get my exercise. I would drive there, walk around for 5 minutes and get what I need, check out and go home.

A coworker called me out on my Foursquare checkins, since the notifications pop up on his phone. He didn’t see how I could possibly be as sick as I claimed to be on Twitter. Well, this is why – I was getting my doctor-prescribed exercise in a useful and fun way. I usually went straight home, laid on my bed, and had a nebulizer treatment to recover. I won’t always be limited to short spurts of exercise, nor will I have the money for the purchases of the last week…but the week of lung hell that I just endured….retail therapy was just what the doctor ordered.