Typhoid Lori

I’ve been sick lately.  My son came home with a cough, and passed it to me while my defenses were down as I recovered from eyeball surgery.  I got this cough last week, on Wednesday, I guess, and it is a Tuesday when I am writing this, and I am no better, if not worse.  I don’t know what it is.  I finished my course of antibiotics. I’m dutifully using the inhaler that makes me shake like I’m jonesing for some crack, and taking the steroids that made a friend of mine say today, “You’re mean when you’re sick.”  Now I’m waiting on the results of my chest x-ray.  I’m hoping for something curable but Victorian like Consumption or Pleurisy rather than something mundane and modern like bronchitis or pneumonia.

 One thing is sure: when this is over, I am going to have some serious rock-hard abs.  My entire abdomen aches from the kind of exertion the teeny tiny muscles in there aren’t used to. (I don’t have a six pack.  I don’t have a beer belly or a pony keg.  I’m thinking maybe I have a little juice box of a muscle – or maybe a Capri Sun pouch, since it doesn’t have regular corners – surrounded in a great big protective layer of cushioning so it can’t leak.)  And you women who have had children out there….you know what happens when you cough really hard and your pelvic muscles are enlisted in expelling the bacterial invaders….

 I’m not a very good sick person.  Nope.  Not at all.  I don’t take very good care of myself.  Of course, I chalk this up to actually having to take care of myself instead of just lying in bed like a four year old, having someone bigger and more nurturing and loving and competent reading me stories, and bringing me popsicles and glasses of juice and my medicine at the right time with little cups of water, and steaming bowls of homemade chicken soup.  Nope, I made my own stinkin’ chicken soup, shopped for the ingredients and peeled and chopped the vegetables while certain other male adult members of my family who shall remain nameless sat in the La-Z-Boy and watched TV shows about cars we can’t afford.

 I’ve tried to stay away from work, but it hasn’t worked well for me.  I actually went to Court on Monday, since I had no choice.  You can’t just not show up at Court without getting permission from On High, which I couldn’t get on a Sunday night when the situation became inevitable.  My representation of my client consisted largely of my waiving my hand in his general direction and mumbling something like, “I represent that guy, I think, or maybe that guy, or maybe that lady over there, my cold medicine makes it difficult to tell, and I’m too sick to actually cross examine a witness.  May I please be excused before I infect everyone in the building?”  (The answer was “Yes.”)  I went to work today, and got all my emails and phone calls returned, but was chased out by my co-workers who didn’t want pieces of my spleen being coughed up on them at regular intervals.  I had to give someone a check, but I thoughtfully sprayed it (and my hand) with Lysol before handing it to her.  It was only sort of a joke.

 So what do I do now?  I’ve gotten a lot of writing done, posted a lot of inane things on Facebook, and watched enough TV to make me remember why I don’t usually watch a lot of TV.  So now what?  I’ve done a bunch of reading, and even started knitting a scarf, but those are precision viewing things, and my eye still has stitches in it and isn’t fully recovered.

 Speaking of which, I’m told it is not medically possible to cough violently enough to pop my eyeball stitches and spew eyeball goo across the room, but I’m not convinced.  Also, can I really say it is the steroids that are making me mean when I’m not saying anything I wouldn’t have thought under other circumstances?

 In conclusion, I want a cup of hot tea.  Brought to me on a tray.  With honey in the tea.  And lemon.  And maybe a teensy tiny shot of bourbon, for strictly medicinal purposes.   And I don’t want to have to ask for it.

p.s.  It turned out to be pneumonia.  To which my father said, "Good.  They can cure that."