Death Warmed Over

I have often wondered what people meant when they use that phrase.

As luck would have it...now I know.

It started 6 days ago. After a long and emotionally exhausting day (another startlingly low blood sugar crisis for Ryan), when I got home from work, I took a hot bath, put on my warmest pajamas, turned on the electric blanket and rolled myself up into a nice warm cocoon, and drifted off to dream land.

I should have known, right then and there, that something wasn\'t right. I am generally a very hot person and do not like the feeling of too many blankets, let alone ensconcing myself in all things firey.

A few less than restful hours later, I woke up to use the bathroom. The moment I threw back the covers, my entire body shouted "Oh no you don't!"

I immediately started shivering, my skin started crawling, my head throbbed as if rusty dull knives were being repeatedly thrust into my brain through each ear and then each eye and the air I was trying to breathe scraped and snagged its way across the raw and seething battlefield that had once been my throat.

I gingerly righted myself on the edge of the bed. The slightest movement sent waves of pain from head to toe.

And then the coughing. Oh My Dear Jesus...the coughing!!

It started with a teeny, tiny, barely there breath. With every centimeter that my lungs struggled to inflate, the burning in my throat roared louder, sharper, crueler. When the fit was mercifully over. I rested at the edge of the bed. I began to contemplate the consequences of simply letting myself wet the bed since I figured that if this was how I felt simply sitting upright, I was quite certain that standing and walking would be my final 2 acts. I waited a few minutes until the screaming symptoms quieted a bit and gurded my loins for this dreaded journey to the pisser. As soon as I stood, the chorus of agonies crescendoed, simultaneously rejecting my choice, putting me in my place, and knocking me back down to the bed.

Hmmm....would it really be so bad? Maybe if I peed on RYANs side of the bed, I could fall back asleep on my side and blame the puddle on fever sweats. But my bladder wouldn't let me let go.

Round two of "Project Get to the bathroom before you die" went slightly better. I got to the bathroom and managed to sit on the toilet at the exact moment my body was about to force me to. I woozily emptied my bladder. By the time I was halfway back to bed, the shivers began again in earnest and I wrapped myself in the blissful warmth and fell asleep counting sneezing sheep.

Around 1:00 am, Leah came crying into our room coughing and burning up with fever.

We both stayed home the next 2 days. Leah spent one entire day on the couch and the next mostly the same.

Saturday morning, I awoke to incredible chest pain and pressure and decided it was time...I couldn't ignore the symptoms anymore.  So, we went to urgent care and after shoving what looked and felt like a miniature bottle brush up my nose and out my tear duct...and then again in the other nostril, I learned it was true.  The flu, type A.  Great.

So, after $300 and 4 prescriptions I got to go home and sleep for a week, interuppted only by coughing fits.

I took the meds.

They did not help.

It is now February 2, almost a month later, and I am still coughing.

Hot.