Notes From Sick Bay

I am a sick man. But I’m not particularly spiteful. However, my sickness does make me an unattractive man. I do not think my liver is diseased. However, I know nothing at all about my disease, and do not know for certain what ails me. I don’t consult a doctor for it, and never have, though I have a respect for medicine and doctors.

Ok, well, enough of rewriting Notes from the Underground. The point in any case is that I’m sick–with a cold, sore throat, cough, the sniffles and runs, a fever and a body ache. Overnight, a seemingly minor affliction has turned into a raging monster. Of sorts. There is something fin du monde about being sick at night, especially if you are suffering from a congested upper passage that makes it feel like you can’t breathe: your throat becomes drier even as your eyes continue to water, a body ache grips your being and undermines it from the inside like a corporeal quisling, and the fever makes you, er, feverish.

So no writing today. Instead: lots of naps (what a pleasure the extended daytime variety is!), some light reading (when my eyes weren’t hurting), both in bed. Some soup; an apple; some ginger-and-honey tea; one black coffee in the morning.

A sparse day. Hopefully, good health, which seemed like a distant mirage today, will return tomorrow. I look forward to throwing off–bathed in sweat–my blankets tonight, a sign that the fever will have broken.

Till then, back to the sniffles, the self-medication, the lozenges, the shakes and shivers.