I could feel it coming on, in the subtle way you know a storm is coming or the Cubs are going to win the Pennant. Nothing tangible, except maybe that weird tickle in the back of your throat. Mostly it’s psychological. That feeling of dread, the sense that your life, for the next few days anyway, are going to be completely and utterly miserable. Then the night comes and the feeling is stronger now, more potent, with an urgency and inevitability that comes with experience. You know what’s going to happen; you’ve experienced it before. And it makes you feel miserable just knowing how miserable you’re going to feel when you wake up the following morning.
In my case, I first knew I was getting sick at Bollos, where I ordered a Orange Dreamsicle drink, or as the server told me, “It’s a French…poive-sant-bevoir c’est l’enfant du moi…” On ice, no less, with half and half that curdled up and created a filmy substance on top that looked like a cross between toxic waste dump runoff and the white stuff that collects at the corner of your mouth when you get really thirsty. Tasted like a liquid Dreamsicle, though, which is what I paid for, toxic waste notwithstanding.
And it was then that I knew something was wrong–deadly wrong. That tickle in my throat. That yammering sting just below my adam’s apple that threatened to explode into violent (and most likely, spraying) coughing at any moment. That liminal ache that begins at the back of your neck and travels inexorably upward into your brain. I wanted to deny it, and did. For about ten minutes.
Nature will take her due. When she does, it’s usually best to simply pay and move on. Hope the next collection is a far off time.
I honestly have not felt this bad in several years. It’s been four since I was last sick, and to my remembrance, times before have never been this brutal. I’ve never been deprived of sleep before now. Of course, you always think the current experience is the best, or the worst. It’s never simply an experience on its own–we always compare.
At any rate, I got about fifteen minutes of *actual* sleep two nights ago; my dozing moments were fraught with weird dreams involving the power my pillow had in protecting me from strange death lasers of various colours and circumferences. Unfortunately, they were temporary shelters, and I kept moving from room to room with my pillows, attempting to escape the beams. I noted that each room change was marked by a complete reversal in the direction I lay in my bed. I believe there were fourteen rooms, if I’m not mistaken.
Needless to say, I was not “up” for writing, working, or doing anything that is typically associated with being alive. I knew I had reached bottom when I decided not to check email. Today has been pretty similar, though I decided that sick or not, I did need to get some things done. Hence this post.
Despite the nausea, the feeling of suffocation, the blinding headache, the loss of taste and smell, sleep deprivation, throat lacerations due to constant coughing, hot flashes, cold chills, temporary blindness, and increased telekinesis (okay, I made up the last two), I do hope to have a couple of movie reviews up in the next few days. Right now, though, it’s all I can do not to heave all over my keyboard, so I will close now with a quote:
Sickness comes on horseback, but goes away on foot.
~William C. Hazlitt