Oh, Lota, that you are well.
In light of my having swollen lymph nodes and pus covered tonsils and fever, I have begun to read The Plague, which is about people in a small French settlement in Algeria who die of a sickness characterized by swollen lymph nodes and fever. It's all working out rather well.
"After the daily clean-up of the town, which took place at sunrise, there was a brief respite; then gradually the rats began to appear again in numbers that went on increasing throughout the day. People out at night would often feel underfoot the squelchy roundness of a still warm body. It was as if the earth on which our houses stood were being purged of its secreted humors; thrusting up tp the surface the abscesses and pus-clots that had been forming in its entrails." (15)
"After the daily clean-up of the town, which took place at sunrise, there was a brief respite; then gradually the rats began to appear again in numbers that went on increasing throughout the day. People out at night would often feel underfoot the squelchy roundness of a still warm body. It was as if the earth on which our houses stood were being purged of its secreted humors; thrusting up tp the surface the abscesses and pus-clots that had been forming in its entrails." (15)