While I am fairly certain that I am not actually on Death's door (although you just never know ...), I did feel perfectly ghastly all weekend with the local version of The Plague. A throat that felt as though sprinters had been doing practice runs in it while wearing cleats. A head that seemed to be stuffed with eels. A chest that sounded like nothing so much as a bass drum full of marbles and custard. It was all very unattractive. Why is it that physical illness seems so much less purposeful when you are slogging through middle age than when you are seven? At least when you're seven, there is someone else to check your temperature, fix your soup and provide clean pajamas to wear. When you're a hundred and ten and living alone, you're on your own for straightening out your own sheets, punching up your pillows and finding something in the refrigerator that doesn't look positively revolting.
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| NOT using the elbow cough ... |
When it was borne in upon me that I was slithering down the influenza slope again, I betook myself to bed and lay there pretending I was in England in 1348 and waited for The Watch to come paint a black cross on my front door. A friend recommended massive doses of anything remotely legal that would knock me out for the duration. That's when I realized I had about a half teaspoon of NyQuil and one measly little packet of some variant of TheraFlu left in the house. I longed to be in England NOW so I could hit up the local chemist for some super over the counter product, not available in the U.S., that would fully mask my symptoms until the disease had burned its way through my body. I'm a big fan of avoiding feeling ill. However, I was here and the grim reality was that I was going to have to climb out of bed, nasty as I felt, and drag myself to the local Piggly Wiggly store for American symptom maskers. One of the joys of small town living is that the local market has limited hours and limited inventory. I twisted my hair up under a ball cap, pulled on the least ratty of my watching-movies-with-the-dogs sweatpants, layered on an old t-shirt Someone had left behind, an Eddie Bauer sweater that is older than most of the kids I see in Juvenile Court, and headed out for The Pig. It is an axiom that, the worse you look, the more people you will run into when you're out. So, there I was, sloping along the edge of the grocery store, trying to grab the respiratory remedies I needed and get out, and every second person I see addresses me by my professional title and asks how I'm doing. This is yet another blessing and curse of small town life; I have no idea who most of these people are. Did I put them in jail? Let them out? Divorce them? Take their kids away? Evict them from their home? But they all seem quite friendly, so it was probably just my fevered brain.
Obviously, I survived. Back at work today I tried valiantly not to actually cough in people's faces and to attempt the currently popular "cough into the elbow" ruse. My clerk finally gave me a box of Kleenex - that elbow thing just does not work when your standard outfit includes big Zoro-cape sleeves.
I was not the only one in my family who had a rough week. In fact, my week was probably a whole lot better than hers. One of my very best and dearest friends (who just happens to be married to my son and related to my grandkids) was in the hospital all week with pneumonia. I was very worried about her, but, for several reasons, in no position to do anything practical about it. I very much wanted to be there to help "take care of things", but could not be and was deeply frustrated by this. My mother wanted to come and "take care of" me during my own illness. For several reasons, though, she was not in a position to do anything practical about it. It took me a couple of days to make the connection between Mom's frustration and my own; I hope I learned some compassion for her (and myself).
There's a week of rainy, sunny, windy, and very March-like weather ahead. There is work to be done and blessings to be counted. I shall, in all probability, sound rather like a leaky pipe organ for a few more days, but then I shall be fine. All I have to do now is try to convince my body that we are through with this sleep as long as you can and wake up when you want to schedule!
