Mad Cow Disease

I've been living in an adorable quarantine bubble, working from home, sheltered from the swine flu and SARS that the rest of the world working in actual offices has been contracting and sharing. I didn't realize how good I had it. Until now.

I woke up Sunday and it hit me like a ton of bricks. Sniffly, sneezing NON-STOP... coughing... and then the headache sets in later in the day. I must have Mad Cow. By the time I went to bed last night, even my FACE hurt from sneezing so hard.

When you're single and live alone, you can lay around in your PJs like a snotty mess for three days, surrounded by a sea of crumpled tissues and abandoned ice cream bowls watching Lifetime marathons and funneling Thera-Flu.

But now that K and I are living together, I feel a subconscious need to at least ATTEMPT to keep it together, get semi-dressed (PJ bottoms and a sweater was as far as I got) and keep my tissues in a neat pile (instead of strewn about the coffee table.) At least until I reached the headache point of no return, when I stopped having the energy to care and allowed myself to succumb to the sickness.

I'll tell you something, though. I never realized what I was missing OUT on, having someone to take care of me when I'm sick. I powered through while I lived by myself, sulked around for days, not wanting to be a bother to any of my friends. But to have someone get you Chinese food, make you tea, and sit on the couch watching bad movies all day with you? PRICELESS. This is SO much better than taking on SARS solo.

I think I have SARS

I think I have the SARS. Or mad cow. Or the swine flu. Or some other ungodly sickness that has transformed me into a drippy, sneezy, coughy disgusting mess. Nobody should ever have to see me in this state, burrowed in a blanket, shivering my face off in a 70-degree house.

I think you forget how crappy it is being sick when you feel good most of the time. Maybe that's why it happens--to snap us back into our own mortality and remind us how powerless we really are over stupid, dirty viruses.

There's something about being sick that stops you in your tracks, though. Whatever was going on at the time in your life is suddenly and abruptly put on hold as you spend all of your energy trying to feel human again.

So I think I'll return to my blanket fortress and try to recover from this mad cow with a few (dozen) hot toddies and a bottle of nyquil.