It started innocently enough. I could feel a tickle in the back of my throat, a vague trembling insistence. I didn't think much of it. Soon, it became an occasional cough, a need to clear my throat, *ahem, ahem* and so forth. I drowned it in tea, buried it in extra sleep, smothered it in long steaming showers, but it was determined.
cough.
Cough!
COUGH!!!
It wasn't long at all before I was going around barking, clapping a hand to my mouth like a fool who'd misspoken, putting my lips to the crook of my elbow and sounding off, growling to clear my throat. I washed my hands and washed my hands and washed my hands again. Then I drank more tea, more water. This wouldn't last long.
And then I sat awake scolding the air, drk barks repeating and reporting from my chest, now a cannon, a shotgun, a thundering host of galloping fits.
It could not be wrangled, would not be silenced. And it hurt. Lots. I lay awake until I barked myself asleep and awake again and asleep again, my eyes made reasonless and rheumy. My hands flew to my mouth again and again, a ritual now, a con meant to counter my canine incantations.
And then a fever, dull, warm, secret. And then it was hot in here. And then it was just me. I dreamed a maniac cascade of nightmares and dead poetry, cheap needs and goodly sins made sick and strange by phantom inner fires.
And then I was cold, freezing, aching, my skin taut and clammy, somehow prickly and painful to touch.
Then a fever. Again. And cold. And searing fever. And aching cold. Like that, endlessly, promenade and do-si-do.
With all of this, there was sweating, all manner of sweating; cold, hot, slick, sticky, greasy, torrential. I coughed myself awake to cold wet pillows and soaked sheets, smoldering like a stone. I was thrust awake, crying out to no one with a stranger's voice, choking, baffled, gasping, filthy with the dust of empty fever dreams.
And I was sore. All over. Constantly.
I awoke early or was awake early and made my way out to buy meds. None of the products were familiar and none of the words were in English. I asked a woman for help and she struggled with my accent - my "new" accent. It was all gravel and goo and sand and rasps punctuated by guttural croak and barks and wheezes and gasp. And sweating. Always the sweating.
I got back with the meds before realizing that I couldn't read the instructions. I had purchased a bottle of small white pills (Aspirin?) and a bottle of Vicks... something brown. I was desperate and decided to wing it, gulping 3 of the white pills and washing them down with a generous amount of the... brown.
It tasted like mentholated Jagermeister. I swallowed once and stuck my tongue out on reflex. My stomach turned and I leaned forward, prepared but determined not to vomit. I belched, a wet clamoring nothing, and wiped my mouth gracelessly. "Gross," I said aloud.
And then we were on a bus. Rather, they were on a bus. I was on a lion, a dragon, a six-winged griffon with a Mets cap and an overbite, a polka dotted choo choo with half its wheels missing helmed by a furious monkey conductor.
I coughed and the world exploded into a spray of shimmering points of light, dancing, pulsing, shimmering like fairy fire. The fever summoned visions and notions of all sorts, my brain cooking in my skull, my skin a broken sopping fountain.
The medicine was not working. It was time for a doctor.
He was taller - taller than I expected. And young. Too young. Vernon and I had navigated through the dark to find him swiping at his eyes and adjusting his glasses. The lights popped on in his office and he invited us in.
He noticed the sweating. Right away. We laughed about it and I relaxed a bit reasoning that f the doctor was laughing, it couldn't be that serious. I got an armful of medications with a laundry list of instructions and was sent on my way.
"Bronchitis," he said. And it was triggering asthma attacks.
Fun.
A few days later, we were home again and I was nearing the end of my meds, still sweating, still coughing, still all-over sore and exhausted. The meds had done a trick but not the whole trick, and I knew I'd have to see another doctor. It took three days to schedule and meet with the doc and, by then, I was punchy and mind-blown.
"Malaria," he said. "Maybe."
He drew blood and told me he'd call me with the results.
Four days later, I called back. A different doctor answered.
"Bronchitis," she said. "And the flu," she said. "And you should definitely carry that inhaler with you until you've recovered."
"How long is that?" I asked.
She paused just long enough for me to get nervous. "You should feel better in about two weeks. It's the asthma attacks that are going to slow things down a great deal. Don't leave that inhaler behind."
And then I was at work and it had only been three hours but it was too much. And the next day. And, finally, class, coughing sweating, magnificently uncomfortable but glad to be out, to be among and seen and talked to and with.
And then I looked back at the coughing and the wheezing and the sweating (always the sweating) and saw three weeks had gone by. Three whole weeks with bronchitis and the flu and barely a whole night's sleep. This morning I awoke and, for the first time, I felt like I had a clear head. The coughing is still with me but the chills and fever with its endless sweating have abated.
"I've been following your Facebook posts," my mom said. "Are you dead?"
"Not yet, mom. Not just yet."
"Alright. Well. Let me know. Happy Easter!"
"Happy Easter," I said, letting a perfectly good resurection joke die behind my lips.
