Being sick is one of the most dif­fi­cult things for me. It’s a psy­cho­log­i­cal mind game. Not only am I unable to be pro­duc­tive¹, which is some­thing that nor­mally keeps me sane, it’s the only sit­u­a­tion in which I feel like I can’t take care of myself. All I’m left with is this mis­ery, this suf­fer­ing that men­tally wears me down. On a long enough time line (though I’m talk­ing months to years), I lose the will to live.

I started get­ting some symp­toms since Tuesday after­noon, when I was feel­ing faint at work. When I woke up the next day, the symp­toms had got­ten worse. I spat into the sink, and cheered the fact that my phlegm wasn’t dark green, which is the case when I have strep throat (some­thing that seems to hap­pen annu­ally to me). I should say that I only sus­pect swine flu, since I didn’t have a blood test con­firm­ing it, but the per­son who gave it to me told me she had it, so I’m going on her word, and my symp­toms match up with how swine flu is dif­fer­ent from sea­sonal flu.

For me, it’s been:

• runny nose with extremely watery mucous
• stuffed nose
• loss of appetite
• mildly sore throat
• dry cough
• headaches
• very slight fever
• hot flashes and sweating

This flu, though drawn out, has actu­ally been eas­ier than strep, which is so painful for me that I get fairly severe headaches. I went through two entire boxes of tis­sues, and I’m sure I would have gone through more, I had not spent almost the entire time like this:

On the upside, it was an excuse to drink Neo Citran every night, which I also call Yummy Sleep.

In the five days since I real­ized that I have the flu, I didn’t leave my house, aside from going across the street to buy gro­ceries. Not a sin­gle one of my friends called me (although some of them prob­a­bly didn’t know I was sick), which was a lit­tle dis­heart­en­ing, but I didn’t let it get to me. Jen offered to pick up gro­ceries for me, but I didn’t take her up on it because the offer was enough of a morale boost.

This time, I sur­vived, I did it by myself, and I’m stronger for it.

To keep myself sane, I watched a record num­ber of movies. Usually, it’s hard for me to watch movies, because I feel guilty for not being pro­duc­tive, but this time I embraced my sick­ness. I may watch one every two weeks when I’m healthy, but this time it was nine in five days (ten if I hadn’t passed out in the mid­dle of Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice). Here are some quick reviews. Warning: SPOILERS.

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1. I have the moti­va­tion, but it isn’t enough when my head feels like it’s explod­ing from the inside. [↑]