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I was a fool last week. We had some really frantic stuff happening on Friday, and when I went home, I thought "thank gods that's over".
I had forgotten "thank gods that's over" is the phrase my immune system basically connects with "I have finished all my major assessment, the break has started, and I don't have to do anything for at least a week, so there's plenty of time to be sick". So guess what happened?
Bright and early Saturday morning, I woke up with the early signs of a rotten head cold - a scratchy sore throat, a low-level fever that just won't quit, occasional muscle aches, and an occasional cough which feels like each time I do it, I'm basically stripping a layer of skin from the back of my throat. Yay. Over the past five days since then, I have had my sinuses slowly backing up as they've been unable to drain due to the sore throat (yay), which is starting to involve my middle ear (what fun) and turning into sinus congestion and a runny nose (woo-fazacking-hoo). The fever and the muscle aches are still around on and off, and the cough is still being a nuisance.
I'm busy trying to keep ahead of things by keeping up lots of warm to hot fluids (tea, hot water, lemon and honey, etc) to try and stop the throat-stripping cough, and mainlining Fisherman's Friend cough lollies (because they're the nearest thing I've found to a shot of Drano for the sinuses). I'm also trying to make sure my middle ears drain at night by laying with the affected ear up (of course, there's only so long I can do this... then I have to switch over to the other side, drat it). Plus I am doing my regular scheduled Bit for the profits of whoever owns the Kleenex brand this week. My voice is currently in "phone sex worker" mode, because I'm speaking with a chest voice (it is far too uncomfortable for things to resonate anywhere north of my lower jaw). Oh, and I'm very glad I bought a new tube of lip balm a few weeks back, because I just know my lips are going to wind up chapped in no time flat.
Do I actually have the time off uni and work to be sick? Do I what?? I had a tutorial presentation I had to give on Monday for uni (first cab off the rank for the semester - I figure I'm either setting a high standard or a low one for everyone else, and I'll find out which it was at the end of the semester) which required me to talk for about ten minutes (with a scratchy voice and next-to-no functioning brain). Plus work has heaps of stuff for me to be doing, because we've just switched a batch of systems over and what this means is the people who are doing my job (myself and one other guy) are manually doing what a bunch of other people used to do, and discovering all the possible ways things can go wrong. (I did some preliminary work on the subject last week - although it was mainly in the form of "drawing up a bingo card", because playing stuff-up bingo is a lot tidier than murdering people. Can you tell I used to work tech support?).
At least today everyone else in the office was working from home, so I could basically treat the office like my own personal lazar house, turn up the heating, and just settle down to baking whichever blasted virus is responsible for this lurgi out of my system.
I had forgotten "thank gods that's over" is the phrase my immune system basically connects with "I have finished all my major assessment, the break has started, and I don't have to do anything for at least a week, so there's plenty of time to be sick". So guess what happened?
Bright and early Saturday morning, I woke up with the early signs of a rotten head cold - a scratchy sore throat, a low-level fever that just won't quit, occasional muscle aches, and an occasional cough which feels like each time I do it, I'm basically stripping a layer of skin from the back of my throat. Yay. Over the past five days since then, I have had my sinuses slowly backing up as they've been unable to drain due to the sore throat (yay), which is starting to involve my middle ear (what fun) and turning into sinus congestion and a runny nose (woo-fazacking-hoo). The fever and the muscle aches are still around on and off, and the cough is still being a nuisance.
I'm busy trying to keep ahead of things by keeping up lots of warm to hot fluids (tea, hot water, lemon and honey, etc) to try and stop the throat-stripping cough, and mainlining Fisherman's Friend cough lollies (because they're the nearest thing I've found to a shot of Drano for the sinuses). I'm also trying to make sure my middle ears drain at night by laying with the affected ear up (of course, there's only so long I can do this... then I have to switch over to the other side, drat it). Plus I am doing my regular scheduled Bit for the profits of whoever owns the Kleenex brand this week. My voice is currently in "phone sex worker" mode, because I'm speaking with a chest voice (it is far too uncomfortable for things to resonate anywhere north of my lower jaw). Oh, and I'm very glad I bought a new tube of lip balm a few weeks back, because I just know my lips are going to wind up chapped in no time flat.
Do I actually have the time off uni and work to be sick? Do I what?? I had a tutorial presentation I had to give on Monday for uni (first cab off the rank for the semester - I figure I'm either setting a high standard or a low one for everyone else, and I'll find out which it was at the end of the semester) which required me to talk for about ten minutes (with a scratchy voice and next-to-no functioning brain). Plus work has heaps of stuff for me to be doing, because we've just switched a batch of systems over and what this means is the people who are doing my job (myself and one other guy) are manually doing what a bunch of other people used to do, and discovering all the possible ways things can go wrong. (I did some preliminary work on the subject last week - although it was mainly in the form of "drawing up a bingo card", because playing stuff-up bingo is a lot tidier than murdering people. Can you tell I used to work tech support?).
At least today everyone else in the office was working from home, so I could basically treat the office like my own personal lazar house, turn up the heating, and just settle down to baking whichever blasted virus is responsible for this lurgi out of my system.
