One thing about getting older is that
your immune system is up to snuff. After years of assaults, your
immunity has file after file on all those various bacteria and
viruses. When I was much younger, I was taken out time and again by
every virus that came along. I was inexperienced with them all.
Being older now, I have been lucky these past few years though as I
haven't been really sick at all. Until, you meet up with something
your immune system hasn't met before. “Hi Ron? This is 340.b1H
rhinovirus..we haven't met! I'll be staying about five days!
Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha!”
Then your immune system has to take a
few days to recognize this intruder and beat it's ass. But it takes a
few days dammit.
It's been nearly four years since I've
been smack-down sick with a flu or respiratory illness. Thank God!
But after four years, I forgot just what it's like. I forgot how
spacey, out of it and “2 seconds behind it all” I can get when my
head is full of snot. Then there are the dreams. There's nothing
more vivid than dreams you have when your sick. They just don't
compare to the ones you have when you're feeling well. It's not
necessarily nightmares at all but the subject matter of them are
plain bizarre. Newer “movies” for just when you feel ill. I
sleep fitfully when sick, waking up after each dream wondering, “What
the fuck was that about?” Then'll I'll have a sneezing session,
spraying goo all over a towel I keep by the bed just in case. A
designated terry cloth towel is far better than damn Kleenex, I can
tell you. Want the logistics of it? Kleenex can't hold gallons of
snot, but a towel can! I roll over and beg to pass out again for a
couple hours more then wake up to a dream about cutting shale rock
out of a quarry in New Hampshire in the rain. I had that one last
night. Why? Don't ask me, ask the virus. I haven't dreamt this
particular scene but it's weird enough to qualify.
One thing about owning pets, especially
cats, is that you learn from them. A cat when sick, will curl up
into a ball and sleep even more so. I do the same if I can. Move
little and try to remain unconscious as long as possible. Great
advice. No ibuprophen can remove the misery like losing
consciousness can when you fall asleep. If you can't sleep, do what I
do if you have the time...sit and stare into and out past your TV set
into the Great Beyond. Simply just space out. It can be a silly
soap opera, as long as you have something to barely focus upon, you
then can get the 1000 Yard Stare and then go numb, relieving you of
any immediate knowledge of how infirm you are. With practice, you can
get it to last five minutes or so. Hey, anything that works huh?
But you can't do that all the time can
you? Life calls on you still. So you drag yourself through the day
but with a totally different outlook because everything is filtered
through your affliction. All things are balanced against how you feel
at that moment. Keeping mentally sharp becomes a chore because it
requires energy and effort. So you are always judging what task you
can modify, just somewhat if you can, in order to make things easier
on yourself. I swear it's a minute to minute thing at times.
Something simple as driving is effected too.
I was driving home from work and
usually I keep at a steady, quick pace. I also tend to space out as
I've driven this route a billion times so I know it like the back of
my hand. Not last night though. I was driving a good deal less faster
because a tiny part of my brain said: “You want to break down, get
into an accident on the side of 95? You want to be delayed and
sick? Want to find a ride home after?” My mission became, as
simple as it is, to get home safely. So I could crawl into bed and
beg for a coma to arrive. I also realized that it's dangerous to
shove a towel onto your face during a long sneezing fit while
driving. The new order of the day becomes, “Fuck that, I need to
keep my eyes on the road and if I splatter snot all over the
dashboard, so be it.” Hell, I was swerving some even as I was
sneezing like banshee, but at least I could see I was.
Common sense takes over fast when these
smaller emergencies arise, like being under the weather. You strip
away a lot of niceties and anything else that may hinder your goal of
trying to feel better. Etiquette? Screw that!
It's funny how personal memories that
are important to you, even if mundane, when they crop up when you
repeat something from your long since past. I had the same thoughts
as I drove home one late winter night, during a major snowstorm in
'87, from Route 37 onto 95. I was working in Western Cranston then.
All I could think about was getting this ship through the storm to
the safe harbor of my driveway. The last thing I wanted was to shovel
out my car from some snowbank while coughing, sneezing and feeling
like shit to begin with. Cat philosophy again. Find shelter safely,
so you can curl up and pass out. I couldn't do that in a snow filled
ravine on Rt 37. So I drove very, very carefully.
I made it home to my driveway and sat
in the car a good five minutes with it running, the heater blasting.
I just have a few more yards to go but the thought of going out into
that snow blasting wind made me wait a bit. Going from super hot dry
air in a car to that raw cold wind will make me cough, due to the
sudden change as I breathed it in. I, guy-like again, sat there to
steel myself in order to plunge into those last few yards to the
kitchen door. I was aching, tired and used that pissy feeling to
finally motivate me to slog through that 20 inches of snow at
midnight. I got that key into the door and finally, a safe harbor! I
doffed all that clothing and into bed, curled up like a kitty to
forget it all. Hibernation time! My last thoughts were of shoveling
the driveway and sidewalk tomorrow...and how I was NOT going to do
it. I banished from my mind any responsibility as the main one
now was to rest.
I make this admission too, guys are
babies when it comes to chronic pain. You can slice our arm with
barbed wire, create a viciously bright pain that'll last all of two
seconds and we can stand it, so long as we can steel ourselves
against it. We excel at tolerating acute pain. But hit us with a
nagging, taxing smaller pains that lasts days, and we bitch. We guys
have no experience with dealing with periods every damn month..so no
mental steeliness to deal with that. You girls win that battle of
tolerating nagging pain w/o bitching about it. You've been doing it
since you were thirteen.
Hey, this entire entry is about my
whining and bitching about being sick. So what, I can!
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