THE 2009 FLU FROM HELL AND BACK

 You know how you feel when you are sick with a flu bug and you are coughing up your guts so hard it makes you lose control of your bladder AND your sphincter muscles?  You shiver all over hot one minute, cold the next, soaking your sheets with sweat, pushing off the covers to be naked and then all of a sudden you need two quilts, jammies, and a bathrobe to feel comfortable?  First day it hits you like a sledghammer.  WHAM, you are DOWN and feeling so awful nothing can make you smile or cheer you up.  ....Not that anyone is around to even try.....  You live alone!  Who cares?  Who even knows you are sick?  Where is my mummy?  (sniff sniff)  Being noble and strong of character, I always tell my friends, 'when I am sick I prefer to be left alone to get over it quicker and not be a pest to others'.  ....right...  I lie, ....sort of.  I want someone to KNOW I am sick and feel sorry for me and care about me - but I don't want them seeing me less than picture perfect strong and robust, and I don't want anyone pestering me while I am wallowing in a pity party for one!

I got sick Friday right after work, how fair is that?  A ruined weekend spent gagging up gobs of phlegm the size of oysters, coughing so hard you are sure you have ripped your lungs in shreds.  You have made so many trips to the bathroom you no longer need to open your eyes when you get the urge to go, and you probably don't have time to grab your eye glasses anyway.  Light hurts, so who wants to see through crusty eyes that run and sting?  Then you step on the cats tail and you nearly fall over while he tries to disengage himself from you and you from him with his hind claws deeply entangled in your floor length fuzzy bathrobe.  You grab a wall and open the peepers just enough to see the bathroom door and make a mad dash holding your breath hoping you make it to the ceramic throne in time - this time - dragging the now angry as hell cat between your legs while you try to shake him loose so you can - let loose! 

Gawd I hate being sick! 

I don't hate my cat, but he should leave me alone when I am sick and not pester me!

This year it's the swine flu.  Symptoms similar to any other flu at any other time, only this time you can't just be sick and be done with it and let it run it's course.  Nooooooo, you have to pay attention to it because this sinister strain could kill you in 3 days if you don't pay attention to the details!!!!!  Does it bring on fever over 112.1?  Has it lasted more than 3 days with a lull then hit you again with a harder hit?  Are you fatigued, irritated, doyour elbows itch, are you unable to pay attention to others, are your gums red, your throat sore, do you have the trots, does it stink?  Do you know what day it is, what color is your stool, did you take your pills, drink enough clear fluids?  (Lite Beer doesn't count.) 

And if you can eat pizza, chances are you aren't really sick.

Are you so sick you forget to brush your teeth for 6 days, skip bathing except for the swish of a wet wash cloth to wipe drool of your mouth after vomiting up your guts.  Are you beginning to smell like a gym locker at the end of summer, or the washer in an old laundramat, do your toes look like they are growing mold? Do you have bouts of dizziness and delerium? How long has it been since you combed your hair, walked the dog, ate a meal?  Thinking hurts, that's a sign too...write that down....,

DAMN IT, I'M SICK, I don't have the patience or time to write this down or think or have conversations with my symptoms, I just want them to rush through me and leave me alone!!!!

Being prudent, after 3 days of death-wishing hell with the trots and gags and wheezing, I called the doctor's office to see if I should go in for a shot or just give it a go with rest and lots of fluids and let the little bug find it's way out of me.  Receptionist:  I'm not qualified to give a diagnosis over the phone, why don't you just come in (and sit with all the other sicko's and wait YOUR turn) to see whichever doctor is on call today? Yeah missy, and why don't YOU just take that paper mask off your face and take a nice deep breath of Waiting Room au du DEATH!)

Doctor was busy with patients, nurse would call 'sometime' later today when things aren't so busy to discuss symptoms and order a prescription for some 'feel goods'.  In the background I can hear the office is full of coughers, gaggers, sneezers, wheezers and drippy babies and kids running around touching everything and dragging their tongues up walls and fake leather chairs, after sucking on their whole hands and every toy in sight.  (well, I imagined some of it, but give me a break here, I'm sick!)

Having second thoughts.  While waiting for my doctor's nurse to have time to call me back, I check my bank account, knowing a visit to the doctor's is going to cost me money, besides the prescription he no doubt will call in.....hmmmm, only $31 left before pay day.  Hmmmm.   And - if they give me an appointment, I will have to take a shower and get dressed and drive to their office.  ....If I could do all that I'd have gone to work!!!!!!  IDIOTS!

Well, that settles that!  Maybe I am not so sick afterall.  Besides, if I go into the doctor's office almost through with this flu, could I pick up a stronger strain from the combination of patients waiting there to share their phlegmy spittle and invisible germoids?????  Would I be safer to just stay home and sit this one out alone and save a few bucks?  I feel better already.  I guess all I really needed was for someone else to know I am sick.

Thanks, just knowing you know, I feel lots better.  ;-) 

That was cheaper than a doctor's visit and my friends don't have to know what a whine (_|_) I really am!