This time last week, I was prone in the bed, down with the flu.

I don’t mean I was cool with it, I mean I was unable to be up and about. I was down. Typically in my life, when using that term, it’s been to describe the ailments of some sort of livestock. Indeed, I felt like a cow ready to be put out of misery.

You see, I’ve never had the flu. I am one of those disgustingly well people everyone loves to hate. I suffer from an occasional bout with allergies, which have abated since my unvaried use of antihistamines. Drugs are amazing. But I have mistakenly believed that the flu was when you were throwing up, congested, feverish, and in the bathroom with the other. While this is partly true, if you have the misfortune of having both the flu AND the stomach flu, mine was of the coughing and elevated temperature variety, which is plenty bad enough.

It started on Tuesday. I blamed my bad decision of leaving the window open the previous night during the thunderstorm. I had a little cough. Nothing serious, just a short *cough, cough* into my fist every now and then. By Wednesday, it was a little more frequent with a little more force. My attitude was disintegrating, as I evidently picked a fight with Shug over dinner. Thursday afternoon found me with my head on my desk, hoping I had the strength to get home and an ache in my back to accompany my fairly strenuous cough. And I felt a little warm. Luckily, I was off on Friday, so I could potentially recover and rest after I went to the grocery store and cleaned house.

Ha.

I had wild ambitions to make it to Sam’s to stock up on sandwich meat and pork chops, but I made it to my closet before I changed my mind. Food City it is. And I wasn’t putting makeup on, either. To complicate matters further, it was Midnight Madness, so I knew the blue hairs would be out in force. Nonetheless, I wasn’t to be deterred and steered my buggy into their midst.

I wandered into the pharmaceutical aisle and picked up some new antacids but shied away from the Sudafed and Dayquil selections. I’ve heard they only mask your symptoms and make it take that much longer to get well. I contemplated again going by the clinic, but that would be $50 plus prescriptions, plus who knew what I would contract sitting in the waiting room with sick people? If I wasn’t better in a few days, I’d go. But I wouldn’t be happy about it. I’ve heard the way they test you for the flu, and it does not sound pleasant. I got my shopping done as quick as possible and was back home in an hour, carried the majority of it to the porch, brought the cold stuff in, and lay on the couch to recover. It certainly was warm. I put on shorts, but began to chill, so I covered up with my alpaca blanket, a constant companion of mine throughout the frigid Tennessee winters for several years now. It wasn’t long till I felt sweaty behind my knees and the best thing I decided I could do would be to power through. Mind over matter and all that New Age cockammamie crap.

So I put up the remainder of the groceries, and swept, and cleaned the bathroom sinks, and put up the laundry I’d started the night before (four loads, if anybody I keeping up with my Superwoman capabilities). I thawed sausage to make stuffed peppers for supper, which was already seeming a bit daunting of a task. The worst part was my coughing was so severe, I would either pee or toot with every spasm. And my back and ribs were really starting to hurt.

Well, I managed to make supper, but I didn’t eat but part of one pepper (unheard of), and I didn’t wash dishes, which is a sure sign I was on Death’s Doorstep. I wouldn’t eat off my floors any day of the week, but you can bank on all my dishes being clean. I also passed on a glass of wine. It was so hot. I began to google my symptoms, which were all unanimously pointing to The Flu. Not a cold, due to my lack of sneezing and drippy nose. The elevated temperature accompanied with chills were incriminating evidence, indeed. But I didn’t feel like I’d been hit by a truck. If you get hit by a truck, you die. There’s only fleeting terror, then death. With the flu, you have times to ponder all the times you should have used hand sanitizer but didn’t so now you get to lay around and sweat for dayyyyyyssss. I felt wimpy, like I should just get up and keep after it, which the internet strongly advised against. But that’s my go-to treatment: Act like I’m fiiiiine.

Fine people don’t wake up in the middle of the night, moaning uncontrollably from the pain in their back from the strain of coughing so violently.

So Saturday, after coming to on wet (not merely damp) sheets, without an appetite, I tried again. Johnny washed dishes while I slept in (bless him) so I decided to flip my closets. I assure you there are few tasks I like less. I’m confronted by all the clothes I have outgrown but refuse to part with. And socks. Whyyyyy do I have so many socks? Nice Wigwam ones that I don’t have the opportunity to wear now that my hiking has drawn to a mere once a year trek, if we’re feeling froggy. But I obediently put them in the bag to determine their fate again in six months. I also have a lot of shoes for someone who declares not to be shoe crazy. And my spare closet space is rapidly shrinking, I have noted, and addressed it to my roommate, also known as my husband. “My spare closet space has gotten a lot smaller,” I said accusingly to him on a trip to the kitchen.

“That’s because it’s not a spare closet, it’s my closet,” he corrected me.

Oh.

Well.

I guess I need to compress things into the library closet.

I finally finished with what I aimed to and laid on the couch with a cold washcloth across my forehead. I wish I hadn’t used that vegetable medley mix that had been in the freezer for eons. Oh! Did I still have that little plastic bag of purple beads the wisdom teeth extraction people gave me? I burrowed around for a minute or two and emerged triumphant. It smelled a little funny, but it served its purpose. How wonderfully frozen it was. I laid on the couch in shorts and a tank top with the frozen beads on my neck. Johnny promised to bring me a thermometer back since we can’t find ours (a dinosaur with mercury, no less), and set off for Knifeworks.

A few hours later, I was trying to make sense of the directions. Evidently you press the button after placing it in your mouth, not before, and it probably takes longer than 30 seconds to get a reading, but you tell your kid it’s only 30 seconds so they won’t argue with you. I have no children, and I’m the argumentative one, and it seemed like an awful lot of trouble to just get a reading on how freaking hot it is inside your head.

Turns out, it was over a 100 in my head, once we finally got there. I shuffled back to the couch, wishing someone would bring me a lemonade slush, like the kind you get at the fair with the red plastic straws with a tiny shovel end that I always cut my tongue on. Always. A fresh glass with ice in it would also be nice, but honestly I was too weak to ask for it.

The fever came and went, with chills, and I started feeling well enough to eat. So I ate my leftovers from the night before, took an antacid, and went to bed.

I woke up at 9:30, which is the latest I’ve slept since probably my hangover days. Even though I had again sweated through my sheets, I felt well enough to fix breakfast. Well enough to fix it but not eat it, turned out. I wasn’t even going to pretend today. I went back to bed, and the next time I woke up, it was 1:30. I had to get the roast I’d thawed the day before in the crock pot before it ruined, so I forced myself out of bed to do so. Then I Googled how long the flu lasts (3-5 days) what to do (drink plenty of liquids and rest), when to go to the doctor (if you cough up blood or if you seem to get better only to get sick again), and went straight back to bed.

I rose again at 4:30. I made myself read some of the book club book so the weekend wasn’t a complete waste. Johnny made the comment (8 times) that his neck was hurting.

“You’ve really got problems, don’t you?” I finally growled at him from the confines of my couch.

He narrowed his eyes. Yes, I’m mean when I’m sick, but he had showed me exceedingly little sympathy in the way of my illness over the weekend, even after seeing the proof on the thermometer reading. “I remember being sick once,” he said. “It wasn’t pretty.”

I don’t remember any such thing. I remember him suffering from allergies a time or two, but not The Flu. He is a good match for me, in this aspect, because I am no nurse. It’s another reason I’m fortunate not to have children. They would die from lack of medication, my primary first aid being the words “Suck it up.”

So anyway, we went to bed around nine Sunday night (no, I didn’t eat any roast), and I woke up Monday feeling able to function. I went on to work, croaking my way through the day, sounding like a smoker of 40 years. The owner of the company had been down with it too, and had gone and got treated with Tamiflu on Sunday. Our estimator self medicated with Mountain Dew (of the variety not available at gas stations), old antibiotics, and something that starts with a D that supposedly helps the lingering cough.

By Tuesday afternoon I was nearly back to my old self. I’m still coughing a little, but I believe the worst was a week ago. Evidently the flu has been prominent in our community as of late, my friend who works for 911 dispatch was telling me they’ve been carrying people by ambulance that are suffering from it. And one passed out in the Walgreens drive through! Obviously, I didn’t have that serious of a strain, I’m glad I made an acquaintance with one of the milder types, because it was bad enough. I’m also pleased to report that my decision not to go to the doctor and get loaded up with a bunch of crap has seemed to get me better faster than anyone. 🙂 Making it through was kinda like coming out of a matinee and it’s not dark outside and you’re like, “Oh! Hey everybody!! You’re still here! And I am too.”