Here's John Verney's inimitable February Callendar with "a stinker," from the book February's Road:

 
And, boy, do I know how she feels.

This started Sunday night, I suppose, when I walked out from Kroger to the fuel center. I got rather wet. I know they say that doesn't give you a cold, like our mothers used to believe, but I can still hear Mom saying "I told you so." :-)

Monday I coughed all day at work, despite guzzling copious amounts of water. Unfortunately I coughed all night, too, to the point that I had to go to the spare room to keep from waking James up. Tuesday I woke up short of sleep, still coughing (one of those hacking things you can't stop) with a killer sore throat. Now, this had to be the worst day ever to get a cold. We were having two meetings today to sum up the reorganization: a general one at ten to talk about contractor performance ratings, and a more specific on at 1:30 in which the small purchases team would meet their new Branch chief and team lead (both had flown down from Pittsburgh). Heck, I would have gone to the meeting with a mask on if I could, but I had gotten so little sleep I felt I would be a danger on the road. I sat in via conference call instead, and the little I could contribute was done in the voice of Tallulah Bankhead crossed with a bullfrog.

Tuesday night was again spent in the spare room. I pretty much slept all day Wednesday, except for getting up to uncover Schuyler and put the television on for her. I thought I'd try sitting up for a while, taking a dose of the cough medicine James had picked up for me Tuesday evening, drinking more water, and watching Leave It to Beaver and Dennis the Menace on Antenna-TV. After two hours I couldn't keep my eyes open anymore and I went back to sleep. As I slept through the day, I did get a fever, which maxed out at 100.6°F before sinking down to normal, then going back up slightly to 99.6.

Last night, I thought we had a breakthrough: I slept all night in our own bed. My temperature was back to its usual normal (97.6) and my throat had quit hurting, but my nose was still stuffy and my head now felt like it was filled with cotton. I logged onto work, but it took me a half hour to think up the correct wording to answer an e-mail. So I called the advice nurse at Kaiser again. She chatted with me for a while, then said she was recommending me for some Flonase and the pharmacy would call me. Okay. So I struggled with doing some work. It was so hard to concentrate! At lunchtime I lay down, but my nose was getting so stuffy and now running so badly that I couldn't sleep. We had another staff meeting at 1:30; by this time my sinuses were so clogged I could barely hear what was going on. I was wondering if I had better call back and ask for a doctor's appointment when they saved me the trouble and called me saying they wanted me to come in. I could have gotten an appointment for today, but I still wouldn't have felt safe driving. Instead I made it tomorrow for nine, since James has an appointment at 8:40.

That was about three, and the situation's just deteriorated. By the time James got home, with a Valentine card and gifts, he decided we ought to write off tonight's planned dinner (shrimp scampi) and go with soup for me, since by now I can barely taste anything. My sinuses and throat hurt, and my right ear is ringing like I've got a little Quasimodo in there.

At least there was chocolate cake for dessert and there's a new Big Bang Theory tonight.

(Oh, James bought me the book Show Dog and Rick Steves' Europe: A Symphonic Journey. I got him a Wild Cards book he didn't have and nonfiction about aviation in World War I.)

Oh, February, you are so lucky having a doctor that still makes house calls...

Labels: books, gifts, health, sickness, television, Valentines Day, work

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 7:53:00 PM

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