It’s been a while since I’ve posted and it hasn’t been because all has suddenly started going right with the world. I never really fully got over the bug that kicked my ass back in mid-September and up until about a week ago I was more or less in a standoff with it on one side and a small army of over the counter remedies on mine. My guys waivered early in the day on Friday and made a rally around noon, but by that night they gave up the fight completely. By early Saturday morning I was fevered and achy and facing the prospect of a 15 hour drive. It’s nice to know I can make the drive from Maryland to West Tennessee while alternately shivering and burning up, but I don’t recommend it to anyone else nor do I think I’ll be doing the same thing again. By hour 12 on the road, everything was sort of a general haze and the last 30 miles of the trip were basically a miracle. By Sunday afternoon I was vaguely aware of my surroundings again and drug myself to the local doc-in-a-box 24/7 clinic and was treated by a very nice French doctor who decided I had managed to procrastinate myself into a nicely advanced case of bronchitis. Four prescriptions later I seem to be on the road to recovery. I guess 750 milligrams a pop of antibiotics and a codeine based cough syrup can work wonders for your system.
Tag Archives: sick
Down with the sickness…
It’s not so much being run down, congested, and generally achy that I object to as much as it’s the sheer grinding monotony that comes along with being sick; the hour after of hour of doing essentially nothing except wandering to the kitchen for beverages and to the bathroom to divest myself of the beverages I got from the kitchen. There’s also the occasional very interesting side trip to the DVD player to change movies. Two days of it is really more than enough. I don’t have a clue how people who are well and truly ill deal with days, weeks, or months of it. After two days, I’d pull my bloody hair out if I had any. Sure, I guess I could have toughed it out and gone to the office, but inflicting my particularly sunny disposition and potentially contagious leftovers on my colleagues didn’t seem like a terribly good idea.
The good news, I suppose, is that I’m feeling better now than I was last night so I seem to be well along the path to recovery. Lord willing, I’ll even be able to muster the oomph to get out of the house tomorrow. It’s ironic that I usually spend all weekend trying to avoid people. All I want to do now is see someone that isn’t in HD. I’m sure that fascination will wear off quickly!
Sick, but not so much tired…
So I’ve been sick for the last two days. It’s your standard issue coughing, wheezing, sore throat, Fall seasonal cold, but I’ll be glad to be rid of it. I guess it could be the continuation of what I was fighting last week or something left for me by the lovely little boy who sat next to me from Atlanta to Memphis and sneezed every 6 minutes. In either case, I’m glad it held off so I could enjoy last weekend and until I could be miserable in the privacy of my own home.
One sick puppy…
Winston has been having a bad 24 hours. He woke up yesterday and seemed fine until I took him outside for my first cup of coffee and his morning constitutional. Yeah, that’s when my little fuzzy buddy became my own personal poop cannon. Not to be too graphic at this early hour, but he was getting some distance on that stuff. Repeat that every three hours or so through the early evening and you end up with one very obsessive Jeff… So, off we go to the open-all-weekend vet that my regular doc recommends. The official diagnosis was “We dunno – Sometimes it just happens.”
With my slight tendencies towards being a control freak and near-terminal need to resolve problems, this was not a terribly satisfying answer. On the up side, they gave my boy a shot of some kind and some pills that are supposed to help get the little fella’s stomach straightened out. So far this morning he seems to be doing pretty well… a little food, a little cottage cheese, and no explosive diarrhea. Fortunately I was already going to be home most of the day today, so we’ll see how it goes.
24…
So, whatever was kicking my ass seems to have been a 24-hour bug. I’m feeling much better now. It’s so nice not to feel like death on a biscuit. Hopefully this isn’t just the intermission!
Sucking…
I don’t know what kind of freight train hit me a little after noon today, but I am well and truly tired. Actually, check that. I’m flat out exhausted. It feels about half like the flu, with the dizziness, achy muscles and joints, and almost complete inability to actually sleep. Whatever this is sucking the life out of me needs to knock it the fuck off and I mean right now, because it’s taking every bit of effort I have to focus on getting through these couple of lines to bitch about it. That’s clearly not the recipe for a good and productive day.
What’s the opposite of the Midas Touch?
It’s been one of those weeks where you seem to have the opposite of the Midas Touch. Instead of turning to gold, everything you touch turns to a big steaming pile of shit. Of course there will be weeks like that from time to time, but this one was just exceptionally bad. I’m just starting to come down from the caffeine-fueled last week of class while on the road and readjusting to life as a semi-normal person. The antibiotics I was taking for a sinus infection didn’t quite get all of the little bastards, so I’m fighting off a sore throat again and not sleeping all that well. So, yeah, generally the week has been a real pisser.
First time for everything…
In 5 years of service, I’ve never turned down any task that’s come my way until yesterday. I had to give up an all expense paid trip to Kansas City because of this damned bug that keeps disappearing and then coming back a week later to kick my ass. So yeah, I said no to my first assignment ever this week and it bothers me more than it probably should. Putting self above work is sort of an unnatural act for me. It goes against my basic instincts.
In this case, though, I think getting on a plane yesterday afternoon would have done god-awful things to the inside of my head. Apparently if you let a sinus infection fester for too long, it turns into something really bad… Which helps explain why I’ve been feeling like my brain is trying to sneak down the back of my throat and make a run for it. Fortunately, my case is only regular bad and should be cleared up in a week or two with the help of our food friend penicillin. I’ve said it once, but I’ll say it again… Hurray for better living though science!
There be plague here…
They say that stress if bad for your body, but I’ve found that it’s during those periods when I am under the least stress that I am most susceptible to illness. Over the last few days, I’ve been winding down a lot of my work and getting everything to a point where I can leave it on “pause” for the next two weeks while I’m on vacation. Wouldn’t you know that between the goddamned apocalyptic pollen count here in the south and the upper respiratory crud that we have been passing around the office for the last month, I’ve managed to get myself sick. Although it’s nothing serious and I fully expect to be back in fine fiddle by the time we leave for Italy, it’s just one of those minor inconveniences that combine to agitate the living shit out of me. I’ll take the weekend to rest up and OD on orange juice, but in the meantime, turn back, for there be plague here.
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