You May Have a Cold but I Have the Plague

I’m sick. Physically ill. And I blame it all on the fact that I flew home from New York last week. If I sound bitter, it’s because I am.

I did everything you’re supposed to do: I only drank bottled water, I washed my hands a million times and I didn’t touch the nasty tray tables. So why am I sick? Obviously I’m being punished.

I hate being sick; oh I don’t know anyone who exactly enjoys it, but I’m a terrible patient. For one thing, I’m not. Patient, that is. From the moment I suffer the first indignity of a sniffle I whine, carry on and kvetch to anyone who will listen.  I don’t let people do anything for me. Hell I don’t want to be near me, why would I subject anyone else to that affront?

Also, while I’m not a great beauty on my best days, when I’m sick, oh boy. The bright red nose, the runny eyes and feverish glaze all topped  by torn sweats….  I tell you if there’s an anti Scarlett Johannson, it’s me when I’m ill.

Some people, the bright ones, look at a cold or flu as a brief interruption in their daily life. A chance to actually kick back and watch Ellen or maybe a movie in the daytime. Not me. I think of it as a personal insult. A challenge.  ‘I am better than the cold,’  I think. I’m delusional.

So instead of hunkering down, when normal people take to their beds, I refuse to give in. which sometimes is okay, but occasionally, as in this recent case of the flu, makes me sicker.  By the time I actually stayed in bed with a box of tissues and a ginger ale I was down for the count and practically hallucinating.

Getting up to feed the horses in the morning took a fifteen minute pep talk with myself. When that didn’t work, I just reminded myself that nobody else was going to feed them, so I better get my butt moving. So I did. Barely.  I developed a kind of shuffle walk that so completely resembled the hunchback of Notre Dame it was eerie. Even the horses were impressed enough to stop complaining about their breakfast being  long enough to stare at me.

All I wanted to do is sleep. Now I like naps as much as the next person---actually probably more. I am a world class napper. But last week I set some records. Pretty much my only conscious moments were spent feeding animals or coughing. Believe me there was lots and lots of coughing.

For some reason, (maybe all that napping?) I was wide awake all night. Not awake enough to do anything useful, like read, but just alert enough to make myself miserable thinking about all the things I wasn’t doing during the daytime when I was sleeping.  I’m not terrible stable when I’m feeling okay, but last week I was in serious peril of crossing the tipping point into complete loony tunes.

Of course by the time morning came, I was too tired to study for my GREs, work on the screenplay or even just walk the dogs. And every time I sat up, I started coughing up a lung. I was a beautiful sight.

It’s at about this point that I began to self medicate. My motto is the phrase ‘better living through chemistry,’ so obviously  I’m not at all adverse to taking meds.  I live around the corner from a Walgreens ; I was there literally every day. I started with the usual stuff— a little NyQuil, a hit of DayQuil. Then I moved on to a combination of those with Sudafed.  Robittusan and Mucinex. Not only did those medications fail to deliver the way they do in the TV commercials, they made me sicker.

Meanwhile I was trying really hard to pretend all was right with the world, telling anybody who was foolish enough to ask, that I was perfectly fine. This would have been more believable if I could actually complete a sentence without dissolving into a coughing fit.

About now would have been the opportune time to have visited a doctor. Maybe I would have, if I had one. My doctor just quit practicing one day about three years ago and I’ve never really gotten around to getting another one.

Eventually something had to give. It was me. Somewhere around day five of the plague I just gave up. There is a walk-in clinic nearby that I decided to walk into. Fifteen minutes later I walked out clutching prescriptions for a whole battery of drugs. Ten minutes after that I left the Walgreens with a bunch of little pill containers. I am feeling better already.