Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

I caught a cold over the weekend -- most likely from one of my bandmates. By the time I got home (late, due to an accident on the Eastern Shore) Sunday night I was definitely feeling it. Crawled into bed without even unloading the trunk of my car and stayed in bed all of Monday ... Figured I'd dose myself heavily with the last of my cough syrup and dash out to the store for more, but I hadn't counted on the nausea. Here it is the wee hours of Wednesday morning, I ran out of cough syrup three and a half hours ago, I'm down to my last few cough drops, there's no honey or lemon juice in the house, and I've polished off the last of the Ramen noodles. I get hungry, but I dare not eat much with the way my stomach feels, and every time I cough the nausea gets worse. Ordinarily with a cold-turning-into-cough I'd be trying to consume as much veggie broth, decaf tea, and orange juice as possible, but Monday night and most of Tuesday I was afraid that drinking more than an occasional sip would make me hurl -- that's unusual for a cold for me. I did sleep for a couple hours (22:30 or 23:00 Monday through about 2:00 this morning), but I spent Monday night propped up awake because every time I lay down both the coughing and the nausea got worse. I was red-eyed and cranky by morning, but hey, I made a big dent in my videotape backlog -- I'm now up to the shows I taped in mid-February of 1991.

I still haven't made it out to the store for cough syrup. I'll force myself to do so in the afternoon if I can't get someone else to bring me some, but something about the idea of coughing all over a store full of food just feels wrong. (Yeah, I'll cover my mouth, but it still seems less than ideal. Maybe I can find one of those pollen/dust masks to wear while I'm in the store ... will they trap viruses that I forefully exhale?)

Gee, I sound like such a guy, don't I? "I've got a cold, so I'm dying..." Hell, to put it in perspective, it's nowhere near as bad as hallucination-grade fever, I haven't fallen down on the way to the bathroom or anything, and I've been able to make it down the stairs to the kitchen. I'm not too weak to lift the kettle to pour hot water over a tea bag. But I am pretty fucking miserable and definitely unwell enough that I shouldn't really go out unless I have to (things that make it difficult to breath tend to register higher on my misery meter than a lot of other things, FWIW). I'm just trying to hold on until it improves to the merely "inconveniently and annoyingly uncomfortable" stage, at which point I can try to shorten the duration with hot fluids and sleep and keep the symptoms down to a manageable level with OTC drugs. That's where I expected to be twenty four hours ago, in which case this long whine would've been condensed to "I have a cold. *grumble* I hope it doesn't turn into one of those three-week nagging coughs." I've been there often enough over the past six or seven years to not let it slow me down too much. This one is unusually uncomfortable.

I'm torn between Wanting Help (someone to baby me -- well mostly to bring me hot tea on demand -- would be nice, but all I really want is someone to make sure I have the right foods and drugs on hand with which to take care of myself) and feeling like I bloody well ought to be able to handle it all myself since, after all, I'm an adult living on my own, and it's Just A Cold. (Wait, didn't I make a comment about having trouble asking for help, a few months ago?) I finally broke down and emailed a local friend asking her to bring me cough syrup, honey, lemon juice, etc. if she gets a chance in between stuff she has to do for work. This is one of the things I miss about having housemates -- popping out to the store for cough syrup feels like such a tiny thing to do for a housemate and therefore such an easy thing to ask a housemate to do, compared to asking someone from halfway across town to swing by. And knowing that if I get Really Really Sick someone will eventually tap on my bedroom door to ask how I'm doing can be reassuring sometimes. There are things I really like about having the place entirely to myself, but there are things I miss about having housemates as well. (Just knowing that there'll be opportunities for random conversation is a good one. Having someone to help finish off a head of lettuce before it goes bad so I don't feel guilty about buying more than I'll eat by myself is another.)