Sunday, 12AM: After a beautiful wedding ceremony, a few delicious hors d'oeuvres, more than a few cocktails, hours on the dance floor, and a wooting after party at the Hot Stove Saloon, I borrowed sport jacket from fellow wedding attendant. Yes, I thought he was cute, but more so because I was freezing. It was 85 degrees and I was freezing, complete with teeth chattering. If you know me at all you know that is not uncharacteristic of me, but in a bar full of drunk, sweaty people who were peeling off clothing, it was a bit weird…even for me.
Sunday, 3 AM: Us girls headed back to the motel for some well deserved rest and water. I was beat, exhausted, and overheating. Thinking that the open bar and endless Whitney Houston dance numbers had the best of me, I went to bed. When I woke up four hours later, I realized this was no hangover, but that I was in fact dying.
Sunday, 7 AM: I began the two hour drive home from Harwich. It was the longest two hours of my life. I felt cross eyed but was seeing double; I was overheating and sweating but freezing cold, and my brain couldn’t decide whether it wanted to turn off or explode. I often think back and wonder what passing cars thought as they drove by me…crack addict recovering from a rough trip? Seemed probable.
Swine Flu Survival Pack Pictured Above : Left-Right: Ice water, Gatorade, Chloreseptic Spray, trashy gossip mags, headband, quarenteed house phone, thermometer, pointless advil, collection of classic/timeless dvds. (Note: none of these aided, healed, or comforted me besides the timeless/classic dvds)
Sunday- Tuesday: So sick that no medication, or miracle, could help. Symptoms included but were not limited to: lightheadedness, chills, achy bones, headache to the point of nausea, a sense of surrealism/stupor, exhaustion, and I was probably drooling and had no idea. By Tuesday, I had started to look at my brother as the oracle of swine flu; every night he would tell me what my symptoms would be for the following day, and every night he was right. It killed me.
Wednesday-Saturday: Think the fever was the worst part? Wrong; day 4 was the worst of them all. Combine the 102 fever that wouldn’t quit with the worst sore throat imaginable. We aren’t talking an average or even tolerable sore or irritated throat; we are talking about an intolerably painfully, looking for a knife to cut your throat out, irritated, dry, scratchy, raw, unswallowable sore throat. It was a pain that was both unfamiliar and inconsolable; nothing could provide relief for more than 30 second increments…not tea, Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia, not salt water; hell, I could have drank the damn Chloreseptic spray and it wouldn’t have made a difference, even drinking water was excruciating.
Wednesday was also the day I started to feel extremely guilty for missing so much work. I had attempted to work from home, but the pain and complete exhaustion (as I was unable to sleep) caused it to be impossible. In an attempt to show my boss that I wasn’t completely replaceable, I called into a meeting regarding an upcoming project. My boss was the first person to tell me that I had swine flu…if her already successful marketing career doesn’t work out, I will be the first to recommend her to any medical school and/or hospital. Trying to maintain my composure and professionalism, I assured her that I would be into work within the next few days. Wrong.
Thursday: With the fever I thought I would be able to ride out my symptoms, but with the addition of the lasting sore throat I called my doctor because I thought for certain I wouldn’t live to see another day if I had to try and sleep with my swollen tonsils cutting off my airway again. I was positive that I had strep throat, or some tissue eroding fungus that was swelling up and suffocating me. My “never use my prescription pad” doctor rushed me in and did both a strep and swine test, which was an absolute thrill for me, as I love being swabbed and prodded at in a spot where I am convinced I am already growing cancer.
After having tested negative for both, my doctor told me that I had Swine Flu. Remind me again how it is possible to have an illness I tested negative for, if not 30 seconds earlier? Oh, of course it is because the swine flu test is actually completely inaccurate and unreliable; so nice of my doctor-gone-devil to conduct a meaningless and non-reputable test, just to watch me flail in pain.
I left the doctor that day defeated, prescriptionless, and with a smaller soul. You can’t come back from that.
Friday- Monday: Same shit, different day. Friday threw me a curve ball I wasn’t ready for. My boss called. There was a second round of layoffs, and I was a survivor. Glimmer of hope? I’ll take it.
I began to function in a hazy, alternative world stupor; nothing felt real. I had memorized the daytime television schedule, and my diet had consisted of ice cream, Whole Foods mac/cheese, and clam chowder for more than a week.
Then magically, all of my symptoms disappeared as quickly as they first came, but my body was left in pieces. Although my severe symptoms only lasted for ten days, I was recovering for weeks after, and wasn’t my normal self until past the first of September. So, after pints of ice cream, boxes of mac and cheese, days of television, and weeks of gym-less recovery, I am proud to say that my Swine Flu pound count left me at +7.
I am a survivor of Swine Flu. Yes, I recovered and lived to tell about the cultural beast that swept the United States of America this past summer. So besides being a beautiful, quick witted, and incredibly modest individual, I am also invincible to deathly illnesses. I am unstoppable…yeah okay.
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