Tuesday, December 1, 2009

The Recurring Sick Dream

After another eat-and-laugh-until-you-cry Thanksgiving Weekend spent in Denver, we returned home to a grateful cat and very grateful dog on Sunday evening. Monday morning arrived and with it, a cold.

Now, I suspected it might happen. Our adorable 6 month old niece spent the better part of Thanksgiving being a wheezing, slurping goo machine. But even with gallons of babysnot pouring out of her face, she was still adorable so we all took turns holding her. Can I really pin this illness on the kiddo? No, but children are usually to blame for my colds anyway, so it might as well be a 6 month old instead of a 16 year old. And as I always say: "When possible, blame a kid."*

By 7th period yesterday I was in particularly bad shape. I managed to get across some instructions to my AP students, they humored me, and then we all basically took the second half of class off. 8th period was difficult, to put it mildly. Finally, I got home and crawled into bed in my clothes – didn't even bother to take off my stocking cap.

I can always tell when I'm really sick (as opposed to "mansick," which we'll cover in a different post**) because I'll have The Recurring Sick Dream. And yesterday, bundled up in fleece and buried under strata of blankets, The Recurring Sick Dream came a-calling.

A touchstone of early childhood, The Recurring Sick Dream only happens when I'm in that diseased limbo between consciousness and la-la land. Set against a backdrop of bright space, it involves large piles of something indefinable shifting slowly. The piles move, in no particular direction, and the rate at which they move is somewhere between glacial and dead stop. They make a mushy sound. Interspersed in the space are tiny needles of light – my first impression is that there are many, but I'm only ever able to see one at a time. These needles emit a sound that is sterile and piercing; the sound is shapeless but deafening.

The piles and needles move through space hinting at an eternity of no relief.

It took me until I was eight or nine to realize that the piles' mushy sound is my head shifting on my pillow, that soft brushing sound you hear when the room is very, very quiet. The needles are my brain's way of dealing with the constant – though usually minor – ringing in my ears, which is undoubtedly magnified by illness.

So piles and needles haunted me from 4:00 to 5:30 or so, when I vaguely remember Kathryn trying to deal with our phone and Internet situation. She left shortly thereafter to use the library's Internet and I stumbled to the basement in search of some sort of relief – any relief at all – and definitely did not find it in Monday Night Football or old WWII footage (someone ask me sometime about my contradictory Military Channel addiction).

This morning was an adventure in figuring out how to call in sick. I've never called in from home before; usually, I make it to school long enough to realize I definitely should not be at school. With no Internet, I was somewhat at a loss. But I figured it out, they found a sub, and I'm hoping the day in the classroom went well; I spent it asleep on the upstairs couch. Managed to finish an old Tom Clancy novel I hadn't read in 20 years, so that was cool.

I've requested a sub for tomorrow, too. Sitting here on the sofa, upright for the first time in hours, the aches are returning quickly. Not cool, niece. Not cool.

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* I don't really say or believe this. But it sure sounds funny.
** I wish I could claim coining this term, but alas, credit goes to Mary Ann.

1 comment:

  1. You can totally blame it on Brynn. I also caught something from her, and it's not pleasant. Feel better soon!

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