The Flu

No beating around the bush with this one. I've got the flu, and I'm definitely not proud of it. I shouldn't be surprised. For the last 2 months, I've been watching students, friends, colleagues, and some parents come down with this insidious winter virus. I even went to karaoke with someone who had the flu, and only found out afterward when my friend caught it from him. For two months, it felt like a battlefield, and I was somehow immune to the flying bullets.

How naive of me. Me! a person who manages to catch a cold twice a year, regardless of precautions taken. Me! a person who gets sick with something every time she travels. Me! a person of questionable health despite checking "no" in every health question box on the medical form.

I think this is what my body does:
"Hey, wait. Does that include coughing and a runny nose? Yea? How about a fever? Yes!? Sign me up!"

Oh corpus idioticus. Little did you realize how truly evil this one would be. It started Wednesday afternoon. My throat hurt, as though there were a single scratch at the back of my throat. That was it. The board of education was coming to observe the lessons that day, so I reserved my voice for that class and hoped it would get better the next day.

The next day. Nope, not going to school. I woke up with a fever, cough, runny nose, and a primeval desire to SLEEP. So it was a sick day. Fitful sleeping, 3 hours of waking existence, followed by more sleeping, and feeble attempts to communicate to my boss to make a doctor's appointment. The doctor's thing never happened.

Friday. Wow. I'm awake at 8. I feel like eating. I feel like doing things. My tissue supply is disappearing pretty fast, but I actually have energy. This is usually the sign of a recovering victim. In my experience, the following day is usually a pretty good one, even a healthy one.


NOT SO! The scourge that was the As-Yet-Unidentified Flu decided to mess with me. It was Saturday, and I had plans, man! I was going to host somebody traveling through the area, then go snowboarding the next day (likely just take pictures after being sick for two days, but still). But no, AYUF decided to hit me with a fever again. Once again, I had no energy, little desire to eat, my ear hurt (?!), and I had to call the girl I was hosting to warn her against coming. Fortunately, she had a friend who could help her out. So it seemed I could safely haunt the house alone in my unhappy condition.

Then comes Sunday, and I'm feeling a little better once again. I do my laundry, cook food, make a run to the grocery store. Things seem like they'll turn out fine. Until I go to bed. At exactly 10 o'clock, I lie down, and within a minute, I'm running a high fever. I can feel it. Good grief. I decide I'll go to the doctor first thing in the morning. At 11:30, I can't sleep, and I'm shivering and I can't stop for 10 minutes. This has never happened to me before, and I'm seriously worried, so I call my boss to please take me to the hospital. I take tylenol to stop the shivering, which it does after 15 more minutes of it. At the hospital, they don't say much. It doesn't look like a disease. Ok - so not pneumonia, I guess. They say I should see a doctor during the day for more specific results. Thanks. After 2.5 hours they send me home with medicine for fever. Poor Tomoko, sitting through that. But I'm glad she was there. I was a bit scared.

Were my worries unwarranted? You tell me. I have a sickness that comes and goes almost at whim and I have a 25 minute shivering fit, not to mention different symptoms every time the fever comes back. It didn't look like anything until I looked at all of it. So Monday I went to the doctor, and Tomoko called them in advance to tell them the history of my illness. Then I explained my new symptoms (my ribs hurt and my upper jaw, which I can only describe as a headache), and wait for them to do their thing. Flu test. It's the flu. Stay home for 5 days, take this medicine. Do your best to get better.

Arg! I should have done this on Thursday. I'd have been better by now. But on Friday I seemed to be recovering so well... Ah well, what's done is done. I take my form to the pharmacy next door and receive 7 DIFFERENT PILLS?!?! You guys are crazy. The pharmacist asks if Japanese is ok. (Right, because if I asked for Spanish, that would totally be an option). I say yes, but slowly please. OK. He explains that the first one is the flu medicine. Take it twice a day, after breakfast and dinner. Got it. OK. The next one is for your nose, the next for your cough, the next for your head pain, the next for your chest pain, and the one after is for your stomach (to make sure the previous four don't explode inside me?), and the last one is the same as the one the hospital gave you for your fever. Oh my. That's a lot. Yes, yes it is, said the pharmacist. Total cost? About $19. (Yay Japanese health care... or maybe they were having a sale... Is this what pharmacies do when they need to make shelf space?!)

So here I am at home, taking more sick days, continuing to rest, continuing to eat lots of Vitamin C. It won't be long before boredom ensues. Do you think boredom is good or bad for recovering from the flu? Well, I will say that I've been a lot more diligent lately about doing my Japanese coursebook work. So I guess there's one upside. But I'm still bummed about snowboarding!