A Sickday Story
I'm typing this from my phone because I just got back for the weekend and don't want to unpack my laptop yet. It's very awkward to type with it but beats the excruciating pain of getting up from this comfortable posture.
So my week has finished and I've retired home again for some R&R and preparation for the next. It has been a difficult one physically because I caught some type of virus that has plagued me for the last few days. Actually, "plagued" isn't the most appropriate word because the plague (yersinia pestis) is actually a bacterium, not a virus.
Just two nights ago I felt my symptoms peaking, and within half an hour or so it seemed like the temperature in my room dropped 5-10°. It came on so fast. Then I found I was unable to stand without becoming incredibly dizzy and shivering myself to pieces. I tried to run a hot bath, finding that the stopper knob for the tub is broken.. lovely. So I sat in the shower, doing a sort of weak half-lotus with my too-long-for-the-tub legs resting uncomfortably on the tub walls.
I feel half guilty about it, but I sat in the hottest water I could make the shower until the hot water ran out. Environmentalists will be relieved that ETSU doesn't find it necessary to give us more than 15minutes of this at a time. So, unless the virus put me in a time warp as well, I took a moderately warm, 15 minute shower. Very luxurious.
It came down like winter rain after that, and I had to scramble out of my comfortable lotus womb and shut the water off. Now I was cold, wet, and getting colder from the wet. I, being resourceful, remembered that I had not one, but two towels near me. I rushed to dry myself as quickly as possible, but was still losing heat quickly.
And now, I want to say, whoever thought of the electric wall heaters you find in bathrooms next to toilets is a genius. I had just such a beauty near me. I ran into the tundra of my bedroom, grabbed a chair and huddled my poor shivering corpse next to it. The lights were off, and the warm incandescence of the coils pierced me deeply.
It was only a few minutes later that I noticed my skin was burning. Such is the price of pleasure. Thankfully, despite their dysfunction, my nerves let me know about this before skin was lost. I thought that was as good a sign as any that I should seek another source, so I left my second cocoon and flew to the third, throwing on two shirts pants socks and a sweater on the way. I sank into my bed, wrapped tighter than a Pharaoh. And, I waited for either the virus to pass, or sleep, whichever came first.
When I woke, I was soaked in sweat, which makes me uncomfortable, but the fever had broken. I didn't have the shivers or dizzyspells. And now, I have almost surmounted it. Its strange being sick if you're used to health. The Buddha says that it is what all creatures experience though, sickness and death. I still get frustrated though, blaming my body for not being better at taking care of itself.
Maybe though, this isn't the total story. Imagine being at the battle lines, your proud soldiers of immunity chemotaxing to the field. There, a massive dying cell, bursting and releasing millions of tiny invaders, alien and packaged to resist and kill. The soldiers fly into battle, attaching and shooting the invaders, keeping the other cells from suffering the same fate. Its quite romantic, really.
And now I cough every 10 minutes or so, and that's that. It could be worse. It could always be worse.