Good Lord, what is this? I’m sitting here in dry, 74 degree temps in my basement bunker and sweating like it’s 104 in heavy humidity. My wife says I’m running a fever. She’s arranged to have me seen by the nurse practitioner tomorrow. I don’t know what the nurse could do for me other than prescribe some cough medicine with codeine.
That should keep me stoned and happy in a socially acceptable way for as long as it lasts, but, still, I want to know: what is this?
It started 19 days ago with a sore throat caused by post-nasal drip. Nineteen days ago. I noticed my wife had had this upper-respiratory cough going on for several weeks before, which was bad enough. Then again, between being allergic to all the animals and half the plant life in Colorado, she’s always got something going on.
Me, if I catch anything, it never puts me down for more than three days at a time. Maybe a week, if it’s really nasty. This particular malaise dogged me for two weeks while I was working the temp gig at the campus book store, but I managed to work around the waves of nausea that doubled me over last Tuesday. By Thursday, though, I was down for the count. I’ve been in and out of bed ever since.
At least I’m past the sinus congestion phase. One night I was afraid to lie down, because I thought I might suffocate. When I coughed I’d free myself of whatever skein of phlegm was tickling my trachea only to find out the activity had swollen my nasal membranes.
I’m sleeping better now, even dreaming, which I noticed I hadn’t done before. I wonder if the up-for-one-hour, down-for-three-hours schedule I’m keeping now is making up for all that smothered sleep. These waves of sudden fatigue are weird, though. Like all of a sudden I’m out of battery.
I ask again: what is this? And what can I do to force it to turn loose of me?
That this bug resembles the Final Flu that brings on the zompocalypse in Bleeding Kansas is not lost on me. So far as I know, one in three people aren’t coming down with it. It’s creepy-scary, though, like nothing I’ve ever been through in terms of duration and variety of symptoms. A body can’t help but wonder.
Like everything else, I’m just going to have to power through it. Like everything else, I will. Whatever this is.
That should keep me stoned and happy in a socially acceptable way for as long as it lasts, but, still, I want to know: what is this?
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| I don’t often take sick, but when I do.... |
Me, if I catch anything, it never puts me down for more than three days at a time. Maybe a week, if it’s really nasty. This particular malaise dogged me for two weeks while I was working the temp gig at the campus book store, but I managed to work around the waves of nausea that doubled me over last Tuesday. By Thursday, though, I was down for the count. I’ve been in and out of bed ever since.
At least I’m past the sinus congestion phase. One night I was afraid to lie down, because I thought I might suffocate. When I coughed I’d free myself of whatever skein of phlegm was tickling my trachea only to find out the activity had swollen my nasal membranes.
I ask again: what is this? And what can I do to force it to turn loose of me?
That this bug resembles the Final Flu that brings on the zompocalypse in Bleeding Kansas is not lost on me. So far as I know, one in three people aren’t coming down with it. It’s creepy-scary, though, like nothing I’ve ever been through in terms of duration and variety of symptoms. A body can’t help but wonder.
Like everything else, I’m just going to have to power through it. Like everything else, I will. Whatever this is.
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