i don’t care what david draiman says, being sick sucks.  especially in summer.  double especially when it’s like 100°F out and your a/c is broken.  more on that later though.

i have to say that i was probably about due to be sick.  over the past few years i’ve gotten sick on or around my birthday in february.  this past year though i didn’t.  now i wish i had gotten sick, because this last one was a doozy.  i can’t really remember the last time i was this sick.

last saturday night i started to feel like i might be coming down with something.  we’d been drinking and hanging out with a couple of friends during the day (and on into the night too) so i thought it might just be tiredness from that.  that turned out to not be the case.  around 2am i woke up all sweaty and gross.  earlier in the day our a/c had died, so it was like 80°F in the house that night.  anyway, when i woke up i had a pretty bad stomachache.  i felt the cold sweats and knew a painful vomit session was in my near future.  a few minutes later i lived up to that and then some.  after i got all the bile out i felt considerably better and figured i’d be ok by morning.

come morning and i’ve had very fitful, not restful, sleep.  i was still not feeling well, and was starting to get the chills.  this is not a good sign.  i had K take my temperature and it was a balmy 101°F.  ew.  i’ve been a victim of high fevers my entire life.  when i was a baby i used to get them all the time.  it got a lot better once i had my tonsils out when i was 3, but clearly i still get a nice high fever every now and again.

being sick sucks.  being sick in summer is worse.  not having a/c just compounds the suck to levels of suckitude barely endurable.  i’m in bed with a 101°F fever.  it’s about 85°F in the house.  this is a combination for some very uncomfortable convalescence.  i spent the entire day sunday in bed.  usually when i’m sick i feel the urge to at least get up and move to another location to be miserable at.  not this time.  this time i was down and out.  hard. i think from saturday night until monday morning i slept 34 out of 36 hours.  it was pretty intense.  at least i didn’t have those crazy fever dreams.

an aside about fever dreams.  one time when i was in the 5th grade i got really, really sick.  tested for mono and all that.  turned out i had some really nasty strain of the flu that probably kills children in other countries.  anyways, for most of those two weeks i was running a temperature of 102°F/103°F.  this is not good for your brain and can readily make you halluciante.  i clearly remember this dream i had then that my room was filling with monsters, and the only way to kill them was to turn on the lights, so i jumped out of bed and ran to the light switch.  when i turned it on the light bulb exploded and i ran from the room screaming.  in the dream.  in the real world i just ran from my room screaming incoherently about monsters and exploding light bulbs, probably scaring both of my grandmother’s to death (they came to town to help take care of me, i was that sick)

anyways, nothing like that this time around thank god.

jump ahead a week to this past monday.  my ears were starting to hurt me something fierce.  after the flu symptoms i got bogged down with a really nice chest/head cold with the thickest mucuous i’ve ever experienced in my life.  after spending a night waking up every couple hours because it felt like someone was stabbing pins into my left eardrum i decided i might want to go to the doctor.  when the doctor looked in my ears, she told me i should’ve been there a week ago and i wouldn’t have been in this situation now; with an eardrum that is about to rupture and the other one not looking much better.

so i was given 10 days worth of antibiotics to take to clear out the infection in my ears. i also got a good helping of 600mg ibuprofens and, as a nice little addition, a set of 100mg vicodin.  the latter being in case my eardrum ruptured, which my doctor told me “will probably the most painful thing you’ve ever expereienced.  so you’ll want these” (these meaning the vicodin).  so far my eardrum hasn’t ruptured and i think the antibiotics are working because my ears don’t hurt anymore.

i did take one vicodin the first night to see how it would make me feel in case i needed to take one before work or something one morning.  i didn’t really feel any different, maybe a bit more HAHA than usual but that’s about it.  what it did do was give me crazy insane dreams all night long.  i dreamt that i became a part time cop with some of my friends.  it was weird because we would hang out someplace during the day, then go back there at night to bust people and shit.  the most strange part of the dream was that i kept going back into it.  i woke up a number of times that night to drink some water or use the bathroom, and every time i went back to sleep i was back in the same dream.  very strange.  i don’t really know why people take these things recreationally.  i guess the part where you have 2 beers and are completely wasted is a big attraction, but not really for me.

so now that i’m on these antibiotics for 10 days it means i’m going to have a nice sober 4th of july weekend.  which isn’t really that big of a deal because i don’t have plans anyways but it would probably be nice to have a couple beers.  i’d just rather my medicine work and not have my ear drums burst open, spewing all kinds of nasty puss and blood everywhere than have a couple beers by myself on the deck.

oh and of course the past couple of days K has started to show the symptoms i had when i first got sick.  she’s smart though and went to the doctor today to nip it in the bud instead of waiting until the last minute like i always do.