While brushing my teeth a few days ago, it occurred to me that I haven’t been sick for quite some time. Months. Not since this time last year, when I ended up at the doctors for perhaps the third time in twenty five years, and ended up being prescribed alarming quantities of steroids.
Somebody, somewhere was obviously listening to my thoughts, and began grinning - because within twenty four hours by body had started to go down-hill. By yesterday evening I could feel the fog, the aches, and the detachment sweeping through me.
Deciding that I was having none of it, I found a bottle of “First Defence” in the kitchen cupboard - a nasal spray that was probably distilled from Smaug’s tears in the depths of Mount Doom. I sprayed far more than I probably should have into the depths of my head, and wretched as it found every dark, snotty corner possible to terrorise.
Shortly afterwards I reverted from a somewhat healthy diet, to the “give my body as much energy as possible” alternative - strawberry jam on toast, and hot chocolate.
By this morning my body appeared to have done all the burning up it was going to do, and left all manner of aches and pains for me to put up with. Feeling suitably like a car crash survivor as I stepped from the shower, I considered not shaving, but then the weight of expectation and obligation swept over me. If I was going to have to sit through meetings for work, I would at least look somewhat presentable.
After squirting more of Smaug’s toxic spit up my nose, wrenching some more, and taking some flu tablets, I started the day as per normal.
The tablets actually worked. Or rather, the tablets succeeded in dulling enough of my senses that I didn’t think there was much wrong with me for a few hours. Granted, they also made me deaf as a post, but I wasn’t going to start complaining.
Half-way through the day I escaped to the corner shop to acquire sport drinks and chocolate biscuits. Fighting the virus with colossal quantities of sugar seems to be working so far - giving my body sufficient fuel to either win, or become diabetic. I’m hoping the former.
We’ll see how I’m doing when I wake up tomorrow morning. There’s only so much rubbish you can eat before your skin breaks out like a teenager, or your ass grows to the size of Jupiter.
Fingers crossed I don’t have to call the Vogons to arrange an interstellar bypass past my Jupiter sized backside.