the plague

I understand it's going around.

It started for me about nine days ago: scratchy throat, burning sinuses. Nothing major, but uncomfortable. I began eating Cold-eeze as snacks. I believed I had it under control. I even felt "okay" enough to babysit Dylan on Wednesday - and he was coming off a bad cold that had an even worse cough. I washed my hands so often my fingertips began to crack open.

For the long drive Thursday, I made sure I had a box of tissues on the passenger seat. On Friday, when my friends and I were stumbling around in an Appalachian fog, my voice began to sharpen, and deepen. My sinuses filled up. On Saturday, the coughing began. By Sunday my voice was a hollow rasp, the tissues had run out, and the toilet paper I was using to blow my nose started to have the same effect as sand paper on my delicate nose and upper lip. The skin on my fingers began to crack on just about every finger. I hardly left the property up there at the cabin in BirdDoo. The one walk I attempted left me light-headed and weak in the knees.

By Monday the coughing was wracking my body so fiercely that I actually retched more than a few times, while driving home. The rattle in my chest was alarming, though I had no trouble actually breathing. I went through three rolls of toilet paper on the 10-hour drive. Today I felt like a rubber bone fish, and talking was an effort - because it would bring on the coughing.

When I got home last night, hobbitt was sitting at his desk working, and shivering with a high fever. He couldn't get warm all evening, and when he's sick, he doesn't like to be "social." There wasn't anything I could do for him, not even hold his icy hands to try to warm them. He did let me tuck him into my custom-made pillow blankie, though. In the middle of the night I woke because of how damp - no, how soaking wet - the sheets on his side of the bed felt. He wouldn't let me get dry sheets on the bed. He slept. I didn't. I was too busy coughing and then scraping flesh off my face while emptying the viscous happiness from my nose.

Today was the worst so far for me, though I made it to my Master Gardener class and didn't need to leave the room because of coughing. I believe I ate an entire box of Hall's, though. By afternoon I felt as though I was filled with nothing more than a tepid wind, except for my sinuses, of course. hobbitt was as hot with fever tonight as he was last night, though he didn't seem to be as chilled. Still, he huddled up under the pillow blankie.

My sister has this cold with the cough. So does my other sister, who lives 380 miles away. Should I be paranoid?

I tossed together some canned vegetables with chicken meat and stock I had in the freezer, then added some sushi rice and a whole lot of garlic. That's what hobbitt and I had for both lunch and dinner. Very soothing.

Hopefully we'll both feel better soon. We need to start talking about how we're going to make this move, and when. It's starting to look like a road trip for hobbitt and me and Inti. All we have to do then is figure out how to get the kitty shipped out. I can't imagine subjecting her to 5 or 6 days in a car. I cannot even begin to fathom the hell we'd all have to pay after that. But such things will have to wait until we all feel better, can talk without choking, and have clear heads. Well, it'll have to wait for 2 out of three, at least.