When I first started discovering all of the horrible nasties that are out there in disease land - the biggest of which in my younger days was full-blown AIDS - and working in a lab, I always used to worry about catching a nasty and not finding out until it was “too late”.
It dovetailed nicely with my fear of having a brain tumour: I’ve been getting migraines since I was sixteen or so, and what if I blew off migraines thinking they were migraines, but they were a sign of - dum-dum-DAH! - a tumour? (“It’s not a TOOMA!”)
If I were to get sick when I was at school, it would always be on the first day of the school holidays. Once I started working for a living, my previous patterning of getting sick rang true. With a job, if I had a fever, it would spike overnight rather than during the day. Leaving me rung out but vaguely functional to go to work the next day, I’d come home and the fun would start again. To wake up in the middle of the night drenched in sweat when the fever broke was nice from the now-the-fever-has-broken and not-being-an-ambulatory-wet-rag-in-public perspectives, but a bit concerning when a diagnostic feature of certain diseases is - dum-dum-DAH! - Night Sweats.
The only thing is, this year at least, if I’m going to get so sick there is no getting out of bed (or off the lounge), it will happen the day before I’m due to go back to work. Or the day I’m due to go back. After my five-days-off stretch. Always a good look to an employer. I am kinda waiting to get spoken to, because I don’t always go to a doctor. Well, actually, I hardly ever go to a doctor, but let us pass that one by in silence. Because otherwise I’ll rant about how the blue firetruck I’m supposed to drive myself to a doctor when the room is spinning and operating machinery is ill-advised. Ahem.
The pattern for fever still holds true: if I’m going to get it, it’s night time when it’s the worst. As it was this time. I haven’t been quiet from sheer lack of something to say (although a thousand words every few days is taking some getting used to), I’ve been sick as. We all have.
Small lad copped it last Friday, I had it by Saturday night and husbandly caught up on Monday. Lucky us. Small lad of course bounced back pretty quick (although the allergies are still playing hob), but husbandly is still coughing and blowing, as am I.
The last significant fever I had I spent an entire night dropping off and waking up thinking I’d have to remake the world because parts of it were broken, which was pretty funny in the cold light of day. I could barely count my legs.
The first night this time, I had to move very slowly turning from one side to the other, because otherwise the waves and waves of bedclothes might wash us all away. Susurrations of the manchester threatened to carry me off or bind me to a wall (the linens weren’t exactly clear in their intent). The second night was worse. If I can’t sleep, I read, or watch something, or…something. But I couldn’t read comfortably, because my eyes were jammed into sockets four sizes too small and weepy (well, der), so I sat playing mindless games on my ipad. And the paranoia lurked at the edge of every game I played. I had to fix…something…or do…something. I couldn’t choose the right game to play. I couldn’t read facebook anymore (plus I’d read it…not much happens around three in the morning). So I got up, a monumentally stupid move. I shuffled a two-foot path into the floor for about ten minutes. I was seeing the universe through panes of broken glass that slowly rotated through molten glass dripping off sharp edges. If I touched them, the molten covering would be soft and cool - until of course my fingers were cut off by those blades. I didn’t try. The part of my brain still working told me to lie back down, drink more water, have some drugs, but the fever-ridden lunatic was still holding sway. Yuck.
Of course it passed, but I think I’d rather be trying to fix parts of the world again. A lot more has happened in the world than anything I have to contribute, but all I have is a ringing silence in a multitude of voices.
