Wednesday, Dec. 13, 2006

The Four Stages of Being Sick


I figure that most folks go through stages similar to this with their own virus invasions, but in the interest of record-keeping and posterity, here's what I've been going through for the last three days (and counting)...

Stage One: The Runny Nose, or the "Oh, Shit, This Don't Feel Right" Stage

I had just come back from lunch on Monday when It Started. That Sahara-Desert, prickly, painful nose feeling, with the beginnings of a raw throat. I knew this feeling, as it has probably opened the curtain for a million other colds I've had in my life. A viral opening act, as it were. Only this bastard ain't no comedian.

I? HATE! This stage. Hate! With fiery, white-hot needles of irritation. I want to set this stage on fire with home-made napalm and beat it out with a rake made of white phosphorus and red pepper flakes.

So, I started pounding the water and the herbal tea, to keep my fluid levels up and my throat soothed. I took some ibuprofen for the sinus headache that I knew was coming. I know this is the appropriate action for a sudden-onset cold. However, all this seemed to do was provide the raw materials for the upstart mucus factory that had laid foundation in my cranium. My sinus cavities, to be exact. Within two hours of Time Zero, the pressure in my head had reached diamond-creating proportions, and if I could have laid my hands on some coal, I would be writing this letter from the Bahamas. 'Course, I would have had to shove the stuff up my nose, but the resulting pile of bling would have been worth it.

Oh, and the running part. I must have gone through fourteen trees' worth of tissue by the end of work that day. HATE!

Stage Two: The Stuffy Head, or the "Please Excuse Me While I Drill A Hole In My Own Temple" Stage

Years ago, a good friend of mine, who happened to have a cold at the time, said that his head felt like a cinderblock. Now, every time I get to this stage, I think of him. Not very flattering to the poor guy, I know, though I do think of him at other times, too. But his comment was just so appropriate because that's exactly how it feels when I have a head full of phlegm. Solid concrete. My head feels so heavy, my thoughts so sluggish, as if they were moving through concrete as well. I blow my nose to get rid of some of it, and it doesn't seem to make any difference.

This is also the stage where The Stupid sets in, where I feel like Patrick from Spongebob. It takes me for-freaking-ever to do anything, to think through anything. It's like my brain looks down at my sinuses, sees that the Mucus Factory has moved into town and its smokestacks are blowing their black, nasty smoke all over the place, and is dumping their toxic waste into the water supply, and Brain's all, "Aw, there goes the damn neighborhood." So it boards up the storefronts and closes the blinds, occasionally peeking out from behind the lace curtains, as it stands there in its flannel nightgown and hair curlers, and waits for the hero of the piece to go shut that mofo down, for the love of puppies and baby seals won't someone think of the children?!

So, silly woman that I am, I actually went to work Tuesday, while I was riding the tail end of Stage One and then changing horses mid-morning to spend the rest of the day galloping around on the hobby horse that is Stage Two. It took me approximately 487487 times longer than usual to do any one task, to the point where my coworkers were like, "Um, Saturn? I don't think you need to count those sample bottles a, uh, seventh time. There's only, ah, four of them? Can you give me, yeah, that work order? No, the one in your hand. No, the other hand, with the work order IN it. Why don't you go have some more tea, maybe go home early? Like, in five minutes?"

Stage Three: The Productive Chest Cough, or the "Holy Crap! Do You Have An Entire Horn Section In There?!" Stage

Inevitably, for me anyway, the Mucus Factory get cocky with its perceived success that it decides to go all Urban Sprawl, and migrates down into my throat and chest like a viral Wal-Mart, or a flock of diseased seagulls, or some other nasty image that would make this mixed metaphor appropriate. The plus side? With fewer resources in place in my head, the pressure behind my eyes no longer threatens to pop them out of their sockets and my nose gets a break from the rivers of goo that have been sluicing out of them. You're welcome for that description, by the way.

However, the coughing. Oh, the coughing. Some of the coughs are just in my throat, in response to a drainage tickle. Others start in my toes and come all the way up, raking through every muscle I own on its merry path. And the *sounds*! I could not replicate these various honking, rasping, squeaking, hissing noises during my non-sick days if I tried. I swear, earlier today, I let out a belly cough that sounded exactly like someone was playing a Lawrence Welk record backwards.

I was smarter today and stayed home from work, for which I'm sure my coworkers were grateful. Not only for me keeping my cooties to myself, but they didn't have to keep prying random things out of my hands when I'd forgotten why I'd picked them up in the first place.

Stage Four: The Laryngitis, or the "What? What'd you say? Hey, do you know sign language?" Stage

I don't know what it is about my particular anatomy, but whenever I'm sick, I always, always end up losing my voice for at least a couple of days. Some colds, it's more like a week, but it's at least two days. However, by this stage, I'm actually feeling relatively decent. I just can't talk. Which, really, is a perfect excuse to not to have to talk to anyone. What bugs me the most is that I can't sing, but not being able to talk? I'm cool with that.

Especially since this means that the aforementioned hero of the piece, Sir White Blood Cell, has shown up at the Mucus Factory, rumbling up at the front gates on his Harley, a case of Whoop-Ass in the saddlebags. He dismounts cooly, grabs the front gate guard by the lapels and snarls into his face, "I'm looking to kick some virus-ass and chew some bubblegum." But he? Is aaalllll out of bubblegum.

So, my sinuses are fairly cleared out, my nose is starting to regain some feeling, and I can kinda-sorta breathe, most of the time. The worst part is in the morning, after I've been laying down and my sinus drainage has been inflaming my larynx all night. I wake up in the morning feeling like I've swallowed a rhinestone-studded softball and I can utter not a single syllable past the swelling. After I've had twelve or fourteen cups of tea or coffee, I might be able to rasp something, if pressed. But I usually just stick to whispers until I'm healed because it's less painful.

Currently, I'm an interesting amalgam of stages two, three, and four. My sinuses are still full, I'm coughing fairly often, and my voice is going out, off and on. If this cold is typical, it'll take me to Monday before I'm any kind of normal.

Though, there are those who would argue that I wouldn't know normal if it slapped me upside the head with a sock full of quarters, but that's a topic for another entry.

saturncat at 9:30 p.m.

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