eurghh
This bug has not been fun. And I don't mean the KLAPPAR SKALBAGGE type of bug either.
I caught some sort of cold or flu-type thing from the flight home - well, either that, or it's a virus with a long incubation period and I caught it some days previously. I didn't feel particularly bad when I got off the plane, just tired (due to jetlag, and the fact I'd actually managed to sleep for a small amount of time and it wasn't enough and I needed more). Slept all of Tuesday (which I suppose should have been a warning sign) and dragged myself to work on Wednesday - stayed up reading my chemistry book on Wednesday night, then woke up on Thursday with an unbelievably bad sore throat and high fever. Spent three days with a temperature over 39 °C despite taking paracetamol every 4 hours (so god knows what it would have been without that), and sleeping for 18 out of every 24 hours. The fever broke yesterday, and since then my temperature has been "only" around 37.6-37.8 °C, and I've "only" needed to sleep about 15 hours in 24. Like the subject line says, eurghh.
I'm still really not very well at all, which was why I didn't make it to BiFest yesterday and won't be making it to Bi Underground on Tuesday, but I'm hoping I may be able to drag myself into work on Tuesday - or certainly by Wednesday. Still have an astonishingly high level of snot (though not as bad as on Friday when I sneezed and quite literally an entire nose-full of yellow snot with blood shot through it shot out onto the floor. I did not previously know it was possible for one human being to produce that much nasal mucus in one go before! Ewww.). And I still have absolutely no appetite, which for me is a sign that I must be ill. I've been forcing myself to eat small quantities of very bland food on the basis that I need food to get better, but even that is an effort and I've been mostly living off innocent smoothies and chocolate soy milk. (Soy milk, I've been delighted to observe, does not make me massively overproduce mucus when sick the way cow milk does. It still feels like an enormous decadent luxury to be able to continue to consume milk as normal when ill.)
And I really love the way I called one of my students today to cancel his lesson for tomorrow, and the uncle (who answered the phone) said "Again?!" when I said I was ill. Yes, I realise I was only ill just after Christmas, but honestly, I would love to not be ill now! And I would really love it if I was malingering right now, because it would mean I wouldn't be feeling anywhere near this bad! Argh! Horrible aeroplane infectious person. Whoever you are, I hate you for travelling with this disease! I think next time I fly, I will be getting some germproof face masks, just to protect myself if I manage to fall asleep. (Normally I spray saline up my nose every hour to clean it out, and that worked perfectly well for the 2 of the 3 plane journeys where I didn't fall asleep.)
The one bright spot in this is that my mum managed not to catch the infection. With one lung damaged by pneumonia plus the general lousy immune system that you get from cancer + cancer treatment, I dread to think how ill this could have made her.
Has anyone seen any immune systems for sale? Maybe on eBay? Mind you, knowing my luck, I'd end up with a new immune system that's worse than the one I already have...
I caught some sort of cold or flu-type thing from the flight home - well, either that, or it's a virus with a long incubation period and I caught it some days previously. I didn't feel particularly bad when I got off the plane, just tired (due to jetlag, and the fact I'd actually managed to sleep for a small amount of time and it wasn't enough and I needed more). Slept all of Tuesday (which I suppose should have been a warning sign) and dragged myself to work on Wednesday - stayed up reading my chemistry book on Wednesday night, then woke up on Thursday with an unbelievably bad sore throat and high fever. Spent three days with a temperature over 39 °C despite taking paracetamol every 4 hours (so god knows what it would have been without that), and sleeping for 18 out of every 24 hours. The fever broke yesterday, and since then my temperature has been "only" around 37.6-37.8 °C, and I've "only" needed to sleep about 15 hours in 24. Like the subject line says, eurghh.
I'm still really not very well at all, which was why I didn't make it to BiFest yesterday and won't be making it to Bi Underground on Tuesday, but I'm hoping I may be able to drag myself into work on Tuesday - or certainly by Wednesday. Still have an astonishingly high level of snot (though not as bad as on Friday when I sneezed and quite literally an entire nose-full of yellow snot with blood shot through it shot out onto the floor. I did not previously know it was possible for one human being to produce that much nasal mucus in one go before! Ewww.). And I still have absolutely no appetite, which for me is a sign that I must be ill. I've been forcing myself to eat small quantities of very bland food on the basis that I need food to get better, but even that is an effort and I've been mostly living off innocent smoothies and chocolate soy milk. (Soy milk, I've been delighted to observe, does not make me massively overproduce mucus when sick the way cow milk does. It still feels like an enormous decadent luxury to be able to continue to consume milk as normal when ill.)
And I really love the way I called one of my students today to cancel his lesson for tomorrow, and the uncle (who answered the phone) said "Again?!" when I said I was ill. Yes, I realise I was only ill just after Christmas, but honestly, I would love to not be ill now! And I would really love it if I was malingering right now, because it would mean I wouldn't be feeling anywhere near this bad! Argh! Horrible aeroplane infectious person. Whoever you are, I hate you for travelling with this disease! I think next time I fly, I will be getting some germproof face masks, just to protect myself if I manage to fall asleep. (Normally I spray saline up my nose every hour to clean it out, and that worked perfectly well for the 2 of the 3 plane journeys where I didn't fall asleep.)
The one bright spot in this is that my mum managed not to catch the infection. With one lung damaged by pneumonia plus the general lousy immune system that you get from cancer + cancer treatment, I dread to think how ill this could have made her.
Has anyone seen any immune systems for sale? Maybe on eBay? Mind you, knowing my luck, I'd end up with a new immune system that's worse than the one I already have...