You give me fever.

And by "You give me fever," I mean "Who the hell gave me this fever because I'll kill you, ya hear?! I'LL KILL YOU!"

So, it's 3:40am right now and I'm sitting up in bed writing this because doing something is just about the only way I can control my breathing and heart rate. Also, sitting up allows me to cough without making my throat bleeeeeeeed. I've tried the whole sleeping thing for the last four or five hours and right now I have to take a break from that unnecessarily laborious task because I just can't stand all the tossing and turning and awfulness. So I thought if I used my clever story telling and descriptive skills to briefly document this suddenly illness, it might distract me long enough to have a single moment's solace tonight.

So enjoy with me the brain addled, feverish ramblings of a sick little girl, please, because it's all I can give myself right now.

I have a fever right now of 102. It spiked late this afternoon around 4:00, after seemingly no symptoms at all, save a tiny cough that I've had off and on anyway for many moons now.

I did wake up in a lot of pain this morning, but my body just does that from time to time, so I didn't think much of it. And my face was oddly puffy all day, as if I was one of the living dead. But again... my body does that from time to time, so why the fuck should I suddenly care now.

Then suddenly it happened.

Just as I was deciding to lay down for a nap to combat the sudden super-drowsies that had hit me, I felt it.

The stabbing hand pain.

In my life, I've come to know that if I'm about to get a monster fever, I get these warning pains all over my body in places no healthy person should hurt. Like the skin of the side of my hands. Or the edge of my navel. Or my inner ears.

So I did what every average Joe would do. I tried to ignore it. It wasn't horrible pain, so why dwell on it, right? I'm not a pussy, I can take me some pain, and maybe if I didn't acknowledge it, it would slink away defeated...

I was very wrong.

Over the course of the evening my fever went from 99.9 ("Hey, it's just lowgrade, maybe I've just got a tiny cold for the evening or something," I thought, hopefully,) to 101.2 ("Ok, a little worse, but maybe I can ride it out if I just don't do anything tonight but rest," I thought, with a desperate, sinking feeling,), to where I am right now.

Which is hell, let me just say. I'm in hell. Only hell can be this hot on the skin while still making you shiver.

Currently I sit, rocking as I type this, trusting my fingers to find the keys in the complete dark, listening to the sounds of other apartments around me; of the wet snow that's slowly taking the night to blanket the ground outside; of the fish tank bubbling and dripping behind me... It's soothing in a way. And what is it about rocking in place that calms the mind? There are yoga mudras that require you to do the same thing to produce the same effects. They never really worked for me any better than just sitting by myself and thinking inside my head like I used to when I was an insomniac little kid. My ways are better.

Sure, I'm wise beyond my years, so people say. I say I'm just about right and most everyone else is lagging.

I should probably put this down in a minute because I feel much more peaceful than I did ten minutes ago, and I don't want to push it. Ten minutes ago, the only thing that could pull me back down from the frenzy my body was working up, was to silently cry a little bit. I guess the endorphin release was helping where nothing else could. Of course, that only lasted as long as I could keep crying, and the second I calmed down I would stop crying, and then it would start all over again.

Good times. Good mother fucking times.

Possible people that are on my list for making me sick...

4: Random people at the show or the bar I went to on Tuesday night (including anyone that touched anything that I later touched in my doomed ignorance).
3: Poor Curtis Rx, the sickest rockstar in the world (and I mean that in the "I have pneumonia and hate my life right now" meaning of the term "sick," instead of the more fun "completely awesome" meaning).
2: A random friend or client that I touched in the last couple days that didn't yet know they were sick.
1: Jody B., who got a massage last night and didn't think she was sick, but had been nurturing a sick child at home moments before coming in to see me (a child, might I add, who happened to have a mysterious fever).

While I can't blame these people in a rational state, right now I can because the fever is encouraging me to. Hooray for unbridled bitterness!

Ok, I'm going to try to sleep. I hope you have enjoyed this peek into my internal life. Dammit, the chills are starting again. Wish me luck...


(Originally posted on February 29th, 2008)