Death Cures Everything

I am sick.

I never get sick.

This is mainly due to my preference for hiding at home or in my office and having as little contact as possible with germ-carrying humans. Or non-germ-carrying ones. Because it's not the germs I'm trying to avoid... it's the people.

I'm not a germaphobe. After all, I live in a veritable petri dish, thanks to my aversion to spending every waking hour maintaining a sterile environment. Or even a single waking hour. I wallow ass-deep in germs most of the time, I figure, but they're all my germs... or those of a human (Tom) or other creatures (BroZarkWin) to whom I have developed an immunity.

I don't spend time socializing or shopping. I'm not a toucher or a hugger in most circumstances. I'm territorial. I don't share well. If I get to work and discover a wrapper or (doG forbid) a half-full pop can on my desk, I am seriously displeased. Passive-aggression will ensue. If my stapler comes up missing, I reinact the Spanish Inquisition until the stapler is returned safely and the abductor is executed.

But some vile plague, possibly deathmonia, is sweeping the clinic. I don't think it's anything flu-related, mainly because I haven't had a fever. It starts out as digestive upset, and then tries to make you cough your own lungs out through your ears. And that's hard to do. But I should be able to provide you with a manual by Sunday. With illustrations.

Then again, I more or less live on ibuprofen, so if I had a fever I probably wouldn't know about it. I gulp that stuff down like it's going to be re-criminalized tomorrow, and I need to stoke my blood levels to get me by until I can find a fourteen year old on a street corner to sell me some.

At the moment, I have two choices. 1) Cough with such intensity and frequency that my ribs ache and my head throbs, or 2) Take medication and lose the power of coherent thought.

Ever since my gastric bypass surgery (8 years ago next week, thanks for asking), I metabolize certain things oddly. The low sugar-tolerance is not a surprise, and is actually beneficial. Before my surgery, I could eat a whole bag of Hershey's Treasures. I could eat spoonfuls of brown sugar. From a spoon. I could eat French toast buried in so much powdered sugar that you'd be hard pressed to prove that there was actually any bread involved. Maybe there wasn't. I only considered it relevant as a vehicle with which to transport even more powdered sugar into my mouth. Oh, and sugar cereal with so much added sugar that it made a gritty, syrupy sludge at the bottom of the bowl. Which I then licked.

Oh, wait. I've gotten off track, haven't I? Damn, maybe I do miss sugar after all.

I also have issues with cheese now. It doesn't make me ill in any way... but it makes me overwhelmingly sleepy. A week or two ago, I got a craving for two grilled cheese sandwiches. I was asleep within ten minutes. Tom said, "Grilled cheese is your kryptonite."

The relevant thing today, though, is that I do not metabolize the active ingredients in over the counter cough suppressants well. I accidentally over-medicated myself into a three-day drool-fest with Delsym the year after my surgery. I've now spent the last two days half loopy on cough medicine, but I'm being careful not to reduce myself to "poke her with a stick and see if she's still alive" levels of catatonia.

This whole sick-thing is coming on the heels of a two-day hangover I could have done without. I realized (again) (re-realized?) that I don't bounce back the way I did when I was younger, and my aging, decrepit, genetically defective body can't handle all the abuse I'm heaping on it. It's not like I can swap out an activated carbon filter in my liver and be good as new. (Hey. Why not??? Check on status of research in this area.) So in addition to trying not to be dead of this current bout of viral lung-rot, I'm taking a break from drinking.

I'm going to be healthier than I've been for a while. Assuming I survive.