Whenever friends or family get sick my usual response, albeit a silent one, is to reflect that I never get sick myself. I don’t get the type of cold that a lot of people do. At worst, I usually get the type of illness that can usually be attributed to a mild case of food poisoning – the 3 hour flu. This usually ends quickly, cumulating in a dizzying waterfall from hell, and positive feedback loop of gastric chemoreceptors locked in the “on” position . Then suddenly the world becomes sane again (relatively).
So when I rewired my parents television sets (they have three – and two VCR’s) and therefore delved into the land of 15 year old dust. Layers so thick that you need a pressure washer to dust it properly. Look behind YOUR television, what you find there is often a landscape of unspeakable horror. So this is what I found on Sunday, and the allergic reaction that I had to it seemed something that was not altogether unexpected. However, I didn’t really understand why my throat was so sore. I attributed it to an allergic reaction and nothing more. The next day I visited CatLandTM, and the allergic reactions (broke the world record for sneezes in one day…) there were not unexpected as well, though were of a severity that brought notice from others.
It was all downhill from there.
The recently unprecedented : I am sick (and no longer just in the mental sense). I don’t remember being like this, having a cold, since somewhere in the middle of high school. That would be about 10 years ago. It wasn’t something that I missed. Now I am bearing the full onslaught of a viral tidal wave. The room spins, my head is full of bad things, my chest feels like a bus is parked on it. I can only imagine how much fun it is to sit near me in lecture, leaking and venting in the way that I am.
My current theory is that allergic reactions left the door open for the gleeful cold virus to come dropping in, unannounced. It then proceeded to scamper up the hallways of my body, filling every room with its vile presence. I guess I picked it up while sniffing and vulnerable from the people inhabiting CatLandTM, but l prefer to blame my parents instead, as we all should.
I once read an article where the author chronicles all of the things that happened to them when they were sick. I remember them saying something like : “my body was so sore that I could feel each and every air molecule strike my body, and even my hair hurt”! I am not yet at this stage, and hopefully won’t reach it anytime soon. I often wonder why we claim to be ready to appreciate breathing clearly when we are sick, only to once again take it for granted when we are healthy again. I look forward to it.
I am writing this part a little later on…. is it possible to have the flu and a cold at the same time? I guess it probably is, because my cold symptoms are still here, yet the fever and dizziness are starting to invade me. Oh man, its going to be a fun night! I can only imagine what the inevitable conclusion of nausea is like when you have a head that is crammed full of swelling and all kinds of bad body fluids. Either I am on a really large elevator, or my balance is coming all undone. It’s not exactly a good feeling knowing that everything is about to get worse and there is nothing you can do about it. Lecture will be really fun tomorrow morning. Wish me luck.