I came down with strep throat last week. It was awesome. I haven't had strep since I was 10 or 11; I'd forgotten how much it hurts to swallow - even how often you need to swallow. It's a little pleasure that is often taken for granted! After my car accident, during speech, occupational, and physical therapy, my therapists were initially concerned with only one thing: my ability to swallow. It was the first question out of their mouths, which I thought was weird at the time. Stacia explained to me that my ability to take in nourishment was one of the first battlefields in the recovery process. Considering that I had been fed intravenously and lost 20 pounds in 3 weeks during my hospital stay, they were all pretty concerned. I remember nurses in the hospital begging me to eat more and forcing nutrition shakes down my throat, with the doctor finally telling my parents to bring in fast food to tempt me. I was taking in less than 500 calories a day! (The now somewhat chubby me looks on this figure with sick longing... )
Back to the strep, though. Needless to say, I wasn't eating due to the throat pain and I was running a high fever. The fever-induced delirium was actually kind of fun at times, when I felt loopy and goofy - but most of the time I was lethargic and too busy sweating through my bedding to notice anything remotely hilarious. At one point, I spent a good hour staring at the books on the shelf over my bed and congratulating myself at the diversity and quality of the books. I did that for an hour. I am not exaggerating. I was thinking in feverish circles, running myself right back to the initial thought like a dog chasing its tail.
I went through only a handful of cigarettes last week, although on Monday night, before the real hell started, I convinced myself that it would be to smoke a little while watching "Knocked Up." It seemed like a good idea at the time! Anyway, the smoking made my fever spike to 103 degrees and my tonsils/lymph nodes swelled up to the size of golfballs (that may be a slight exaggeration). Some might say that my smoking exacerbated the infection. Those people would be right. I would just like to reiterate: it seemed like a good idea at the time.
Meanwhile, in Uganda, Kate has just recovered from salmonella poisoning. It involved a great deal of personal unpleasantness that I won't get into... we emailed back and forth a few times, and then she got sick with strep. Now she's mad at me for giving her strep via email! Who'da thunk a bacterial virus could travel via Google Talk? This discovery could lead to cyber-biological warfare, if it falls into the hands of antisocial misfits and, of course, the terrorists (that last word was intended to be whispered conspiratorially).
Rereading this post makes me think I may still be a little delirious. I'm going to bed.
