The flu season is upon us, and of course I had to find that out the hard way. When I started to feel ill this past Saturday night, I wrote it off to the usual effect the changing of the season has on my body — the shift from summer mode to winter mode and the necessary change in wardrobe parts. I resided myself to recoup for the rest of my weekend and just be in shape for work on Monday.
But Monday hit like a frosted sledgehammer. My head throbbed and my body shook. Obviously an extra day of bed rest was required. Hey, sometimes colds don’t work on a work-friendly schedule. It was going to screw with some of my deadlines, but it couldn’t be helped. Still, by that afternoon I had sweated away most of the fever I had in the morning and I assumed the worst was over, so I 100% guaranteed that I would be at the office the next day.
And I have never regretted a guarantee more. I was up by 5:30, shaking and shivering. I spent the restless hours piling on sweatclothes and blankets. When I finally dragged myself into the shower, I sat there under the hottest of water for a half hour to try and thaw myself. Triple layered and with head throbbing, I boarded the bus and the overly-blinding light. A head full of sick can screw with your sensitivity to light, but never before have I known it to be so painful.
How I lasted as long as I did that day at work still shocks and amazes me. Through the haze and the fever sweats I managed to focus my mind enough to work in the code for five hours, until my boss finally told me to go home and rest. Had I not made that promise in an email the night before, I doubt I would have tried something so foolish. I made a new guarantee, this time only to myself. If I awoke with a fever again, home I would stay.
Last I checked 101.7 is not standard human operating temperature.
So now the week is half gone and about the only thing I feel like I’ve truly accomplished is catching up on the myriad of Farscape episodes I’ve never had the chance to see — all thanks to my TiVo and SciFi running a marathon in lead up to a new mini-series debuting this weekend. Aliens and living spaceships make great fodder for fever dreams, let me tell you. Now armed with some industrial strength medicine that my doctor’s office so kindly arranged for me to procure, my road to recovery looks a lot shorter. But will I be in shape to hit the office tomorrow?
We’ll talk about tomorrow when tomorrow gets here.
Tags: Personal