Monster Cold

AaaarrRRRRrrggggHHHhh!

I don't know about anybody else, but when I'm sick (as now), in the morning I sound pretty much like Peter Boyle as Frankenstein's Monster, all unintelligible grunts, groans and bellows... with a smattering of muttering Tourette's-like profanity thrown in. (More than usual, that is.) It's cathartic, I suppose, and a rage, rage against the getting up out of bed, but mostly just a pathetic plea for sympathy to humanity and the cold, unfeeling cosmos. Thus, I try to curtail my inner illness-diva when other human beings are around, even if they're the sort who find gargling, even in the bathroom with the door closed, a horribly rude act only slightly less philistine than breaking wind in public.

I hope to avoid it turning into something worse that requires antibiotics, a remedy that always makes me think of the marvels of modern medicine. Prior to the 20th Century, with some exceptions, many a patient had a much higher chance of survival by avoiding the doctor. All the purgatives, bleeding, and many other misguided "cures" were often harsh or even lethal to the patient. That's not to mention the horrors of battlefield medicine in some eras, where the camp medic might have been a literal butcher in civilian life and where the remedy for a simple broken ankle was in some cases amputation. Brrrr. It does make me appreciate, looking back over the various drugs I've been prescribed in my life, that I and many other people would probably be dead several times over in other eras. It also brings to mind how relatively cheap drugs could help in other parts of the world where common ailments go untreated and can be crippling or lethal.

So my groaning is certainly more on the level of exhaustion and annoyance than Job-like affliction. Yes, a few social outings have or will likely be dropped. And I will say it's frustrating to have the scant hours of free time further curtailed by an even smaller window of lucidity. But for all that mental murkiness and petulant crankiness, I still haven't been a disaster on the level of Biblical plague as has been our preznit, nor have I yet managed to set myself on fire.