Saturday, February 21, 2015

Don't Try This At Home

Two weeks ago Dave brought home a cough, not that we needed one. It was pretty annoying. To him, probably, too. Mine came in a few days later and before long we sounded like the TB ward. Nothing dry about the cough, either. It was long and juicy, chest-deep, and tailed off like cans rattling behind the Trans-Am at your cousin's wedding.

That was entertaining for a few days and then we peeled off into specialties. I got head congestion resembling concrete for a day or two and then it subsided into something blowable. So that was an improvement. I developed an odd, rippling, lackadaisical, old-lady flatulence that (since I was eating nothing) I put down to my gut bacteria working over the gallons of phlegm I was swallowing. And then, a week in, and rather abruptly, and after noticing that I was on the floor for some reason, I realized I needed to get into a more comfortable position from which I was unlikely to fall further. I threw kibble at the cat without even making her roll over for it and got into bed.

I don't know what my temperature was. The next morning, which arrived against all odds, I felt pretty decent and took my temperature, and it was above 101. So I'm pegging the previous night at 109. I got up a few times in the night and ricocheted all the way to the bathroom on spherical feet. I had it together just enough to assemble a wastebasket in front of the toilet but I couldn't work out the essential problem: if I was going to throw up and I was going to faint, didn't it matter which order I did those in? I was pretty sure it mattered.

Somehow I got back to bed using a path that would be represented in The Family Circus by hyphens, and continued enjoying my fever. I  was engaged in the endless arrangement and re-arrangement of blocks of type from the Gutenberg era, and the lighting wasn't good. Chinkity chinkity chunk. Chinkity chinkity chinkity chunk. Periodically red lights would appear. They would invariably turn out to be eyeshine from the left eyeball of someone quite recognizable. Rasputin. Katie Couric.

The upside of the delirium was I didn't have to hear Dave cough. Since he had never worked up much in the way of a fever--a brief flirtation with 99--he had decided to double down on the coughing. Now he spent every night and much of the day working out phlegm, chunks of lung tissue, vermin, items of furniture, and the like, culminating in a little sob. He'd pared his sleeping time down to nothing. I was sleeping twenty hours a day. Whereas before we had been able to take turns doing each other the occasional small favor--a plate of sliced apples here, a poached egg there, a refill on the vaporizer--now we peered at each other with quelling hostility lest the other deign to ask for something.

My coughing could not compete with Dave's in degree of difficulty or style points, but it was still plenty persistent. By the third day of my 102+ fevers, I began to feel my ribs snap, one by one. One of them poked all the way through the skin, but it was in the back so it didn't show. A friend came by, flang rescue groceries onto the porch, and peeled away from the curb with a honk.

I'm pretty sure Googling the symptoms of Ebola is one of the symptoms of Ebola.

That night I abandoned the type rearrangement project and instead examined busy little white strands of DNA, masses of them, motoring away on the world's ceiling six inches above my head like processionary caterpillars. Later I couldn't remember if I was making boulders or little haystacks, so made little progress. I woke up with my face sealed shut. My eyes were breaded and I spent the morning chiseling away at a new cement installation around my nostrils.

And I discovered that the entire inside of my face now tasted and smelled like nothing I had ever encountered before. But it wasn't anything you'd associate with a person who's still alive. I went to our doctor. She confirmed I had the flu.

"I don't get the flu," I explained patiently. "I've never gotten the flu."

Did you get the flu shot?

"I did get the flu shot."

Oh, that's right. This year's flu shot didn't target this year's flu.

But I had a deal. The deal was, I get strep throat and everyone else gets the flu. I'm the strep queen. I might have had it thirty times. You feel like shit for two days, you go to the doctor, you get a bunch of pills, you start to feel better. I was happy to take the strep throat burden off my fellow citizens. Proud, even. But this--this is bullshit. This is the stupidest idea ever. There is no point to it.

I'm home now enjoying my recovery, with a few new features. My ears finally got off the train and said they'd check back with me in a few stations. Every time I lie down I hear doughboys marching endlessly in the snow in the trenches where they used to be. I feel like shit. But now it's shit I can see over. A few days from now, I hope, I'll be able to cremate the bed linens and start anew.

46 comments:

  1. Oof! I hope you feel better soon; I know how awful the flu is. I don't normally get it either, and had it several years ago. I can see why it can kill the very young or the very old. I didn't eat. Lost several pounds I didn't need to lose. Hallucinated (that part was fun, actually!). Dragged myself from the sofa to the bed to the toilet and around again. Started to really be pissed off by people who would get a mere cold and complain that they had "the flu". These cretins don't know flu! You know it's the flu when you not only can't make it to work, you can barely make it to the toilet!

    I think that out of all "Dr. Pootie's" remedies above, the Glenfidditch is the only sensible one. Or Nyquil -- even during the day. I would take that stuff in a shot glass and pretend it was Chartreuse. Similar taste.

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    1. Next person I see walking around upright with the sniffles who thinks he has the "flu," I'm going to punch him.

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  2. You make the Flu funny as only you can do, however, glad you saw a doctor. My nephew, a healthy athletic 40 year old, almost waited too long with this years flu. He ended up in intensive care for 10 days and barely pulled through.

    Don't mess with this one, it is not your grandma's flu.

    Recover soon!

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    1. Jesus! How awful! It is reputed to be a bad one this year, as well as dodging the vaccine. I will say we probably shouldn't be dissing my grandma's flu. She was born in 1886 and presided over some pandemics.

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    2. 1882. She was born in 1882. I just looked it up. Must be feeling better.

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  3. Oh, man, that sounds brutal. And trust you to find the funny in it. I'm sure it was anything but, at the time.

    Get well quickly, eh?

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    1. Not there yet. Right now I'm at the stage where I'd tell anyone I felt really sick, but in the context of the last week I can't make myself do it.

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  4. That was, without a doubt, the FUNNIEST story of impending death I've ever read!!

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  5. Someone once told me that you know you have the actual flu when instead of being afraid you might be going to die, you start being afraid you won't.

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    1. Now that it's official that I have the flu, and Dave has pneumonia, I'm worried I'll get pneumonia, and he'll get the flu.

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    2. Dave has pneumonia? Yikes. Now listen you two, I think the problem is all that gardening and hiking and stuff y'all do; it makes you weak and defenceless. Don't do that stuff from now on.

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  6. Poorest dearies, please feel better soon. I am now officially scared shitless to get this flu.

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    1. Before this year, I wasn't even thinking about getting flu vaccines. I thought I had a natural immunity. I'll be the first in line next year. (Although I did get the shot this year...)

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  7. This is an awful year. We got the flu and then a sinus infection (Art) and pneumonia (me). It took nearly a month to regain most of my energy, and the cough lingered for six weeks. Hope you heal up real quick.

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    1. I was starting to feel better, and now I'm starting to feel worse.

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    2. That happens with the flu. Don't tell me viruses don't have a sense of humor. They play with you like a cat plays with a half-dead mouse, and then they laugh at you.

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    3. At least with my ears slammed shut I can't hear them laughing.

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  8. Flu, pneumonia, and now a relapse. Yikes, Murr! Heal, woman, heal.

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    1. No, I meant I was feeling worse, thinking I might have another month of this. I do feel better. But that's no great shakes, yet.

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  9. So...do we now call you Typhoid Murr?
    Whatever the sobriquet, do recover soon.Some of may need a ghost rider should we fall ill.

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    1. I've been called worse. In fact, I've been called THAT.

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  10. The rule is: throw up first, move away one step (or crawl one crawl), then faint. Prevents aspiration pneumonia. Remember this for next time.

    Seriously, I hope there'll never be a next time. And that you get over this one soon.

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    1. I'm going to have to mark the wastebasket with a Sharpie. No counting on remembering that. For the record, I didn't do either one. I staggered to the sink and managed to get some water in me and that got me back to bed.

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  11. Geesh!! I do not want to get what you had!! Do NOT come to Chrysalis at CCC anytime soon!!! Love ya but not into sharing diseases.

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    1. I've cancelled several outings already. I don't hate anybody bad enough to share this.

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  12. Oh No! This is terrible. Did you get a blood test to check for whooping cough as well? Because of all the coughing. adults don't get the "whoop" sound, that's just for babies, so you can't tell, but the virus shows up in the blood.
    I'm so sorry you've had this and hope that by now you are feeling much better, Dave too. I had my first ever flu last year and I sure as heck don't want it ever again.
    I quite like the mental image I have of you rolling around on spherical feet (*~*)

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    1. It was like being in a funhouse. I was marginally concerned I wouldn't make it at all, but somehow almost amused at the trajectories I was taking.

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  13. You used funny words to describe it but there is no level on which this is funny. It is filthy and awful and lousy, and I'm sorry you and Dave have been levelled by it. Heal well, you two. If I didn't live on the other side of the continent, I'd leave chicken soup on your porch and honk as I sped away.

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    1. You'll be pleased to know we've had more than one chicken soup delivery! We gots good people.

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  14. You won't get Dave's pneumonia. It's not catching. I can attest that this years flu was monumental. They were practically lining our halls where I work in western Kentucky. Thankfully, it seems to have loped out of town some time in late January. Portland must have been a late destination on it's path. Get better, both of you.

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    1. Thanks! I'll proceed to ignore the blood I'm now coughing up.

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    2. Don't ignore it, but don't freak out - coughing, especially in large doses, can cause tiny ruptured veins in your something (bronchial tubes, perhaps?). Okay, I'm not a nurse OR a doctor, but my father has COPD and when he gets a chest infection and his coughing reaches epic proportions, this happens to him. They always watch it carefully, but it always goes away. Also, not to be argumentative with cowango, but aren't there two kinds of pneumonia - viral and bacterial? Really would like to know the answer, as I've been going on that theory for awhile now. Viral is contagious, bacterial isn't.

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    3. Too tired to look it up, but I think that's true. Dave's is bacterial. At least they gave him antibiotics, and they don't toss them around like candy anymore.

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    4. Nurse alert: If you're still coughing up blood call your dr. Especially if this is new. I am a nurse and a change in sputum is not a good thing. Just to be safe.

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    5. At this point it's a little brownish in the morning and greenish the rest of the day. I think I'm okay. When can you move in? We need tending.

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  15. Is this the flu you started to feel when we were at your place for M's a couple of weeks ago? And Dave was coughing, too? How awful! I hope you didn't go frogging that night. We are all well around these parts. Hope you are both truly on the mend.

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    1. One and the same. Tenacious little sucker it is. I'm glad y'all didn't pick it up.

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  16. As long as you and Dave keep waking up on the right side of the dirt I'll be happy. This is about my happiness, isn't it?

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    1. Basically, it's all selfish. Because if Jono ain't happy, ain't nobody happy.

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  17. You write real good even when you are real sick! I hope you are both completely better soon and don't end up exchanging your diseases with each other.
    And you said "flang"! I love that word.

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    1. I say "flang" a lot. Also "hoovered" and "whacketed."

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  18. Damn that useless flue shot. Feel better soon, Murr!

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    1. I only just started getting them, but I guess they're usually pretty reliable. This one targeted ten flus and the other one came in from behind.

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  19. OMG. I felt almost as bad laughing at this account as I did prying the cement off my own eyelids so I could find the wastebasket. Glad to hear you are on the mend. Glad that, even if you can't laugh about it yet, you've been able to make the rest of us clear our lungs with a fit of coughing brought on by laughing too hard.

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