… or is it a cold? (Update: it’s a flu.)
It started in a relatively benign manner. Tuesday morning I awoke with a slightly sore throat and a minor headache. I suspected I was infected by the same bug that struck JB on Sunday. But, as far as bugs went, this one didn’t seem so bad.
I went to work and shortly after lunch was telling a co-worker that I wasn’t feeling so hot. “Go home,” she suggested. “There’s not a lot going on here. You do look a little wan.”
I realized she was right. My work is very cyclical and we’re entering the slow part of the year. I’m rarely ill and so have sufficient sick leave. I shouldn’t be hanging around taking the chance of infecting my colleagues. I should go.
And so I left. That afternoon was pretty sweet. A free afternoon off work, and, while my throat was sore and the mild headache persisted, I wasn’t so sick I couldn’t have stayed at work. And, if I had had classes or meetings, or a pressing deadline I probably would have.
“I guess it’s not affecting me as badly as JB,” I thought. By Tuesday she was deep in the bowels of flu hell.
Wednesday the soreness in my throat was sharper, the headache a little stronger. Still, I could read, and I worked a little on my story. I napped. Low energy, didn’t feel great, but not bad. I felt confident that the next day I would be on the mend.
And then Thursday struck. What had been a minor sore throat turned into blistering pain. No amount of ibuprofen would kill the splitting headache. What had been a minor fever that would sneak up and then flee, came on strong and persisted. I ping-ponged between hot and sweaty and chilled and shivering. That night I couldn’t sleep. Someone was extinguishing their cigar on the back of my throat. Each cough felt like a serrated knife dragged across the blistering sore. I tried to breathe shallowly to reduce the chance of coughing. My body, however, wanted to belch, which triggered coughing. Sometimes the tears were just one of the symptoms of the flu, other times they were a response to the unrelenting pain.
Did I mention the farting. Early on in this process I noted my level of gas skyrocketed. Really amazing, tremendous farts that went on forever. And then another within moments. Where does all that gas come from? I don’t know, but I imagine it is the waste product of the invading army. My defense mechanisms were waging an all-out war to save my life, and the corpses of the enemy were vaporized into great clouds that had to be expelled. The enemy was mighty and multitudinous.
Friday I lost the ability to speak above a whisper, but I didn’t want to speak anyway because it might trigger a cough. The headache was intense and persistent. No amount of ibuprofen dulled it. There was no more reading. Even watching TV was too much to bear. I did my best to nap, but mostly I lay on the couch and suffered.
Now it is Saturday. The dark night of flu misery has passed. The throat is still sore, but nothing like it was. The head still hurts, but now ibuprofen seems to have some effect. The coughing is productive, no longer dry and painful. There is no more farting, but my left nostril will not stop dripping. In fact, dripping is too picayune for what it is doing. It is constantly streaming without stop, like a faucet turned on. I must hydrate myself or at this rate I will be a dried out husk by midnight.
I am optimistic that the worst is behind me. My weekend will be given to rest, relaxation, and re-hydration. And by early next week I will return to my preferred life of not having the flu all the fucking time.
UPDATE: Sunday turned out to be a profound day of snot. It made me feel like King Duncan, except with snot instead of blood.
“Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much snot in him.”
Monday off to work, because Good Lord! how much work can I seriously miss? Quite a bit, it turns out. After a couple of hours I’m off to the clinic to get a z-pak and some prednisone. Monday is also the end of one week with the flu.
Week two of flu life begins on Tuesday and I manage to make myself human enough to do a half day at work.
Wednesday, I should be improving, right? That’s the way the trajectory is supposed to move. Incremental improvement everyday until back to my rip-roaring best. Except this morning I awake at 5am feeling like some renegade MMA fighter has slipped into my bedroom and kicked me in the right side of my head. My ear and sinus feel walloped. Nonetheless, I persist. It takes me about 75 minutes to assemble myself into something vaguely human and I trundle to work. Only to trundle home after about an hour, because my coughing is loud and persistent and disturbing all those trying to study.
Ah, well. We’ll see what tomorrow brings. At least the blinding headaches have stopped and I can now read while I recuperate.