April 25, 2003

• blah

  Wednesday, my early morning brain fog was thicker than usual and it
  didn’t lift at all, not for the entire day.  The second pot of
  coffee just made my stomach hurt.  My eyes started itching and
  watering.  My nose got congested.  My throat began to feel as
  if it was on fire.  I started craving ice cream, my lifelong
  comfort food for sore throats.  Not on my diet, need I add?

  There was no fever, so I still wasn’t sure whether it was a pollen
  allergy or if I’d caught whatever Seph had picked up on his way over
  here from Germany.  His voice was a fading croak when he arrived
  and he had a runny nose the whole time he was here.

  The “immunodysfunction” part of ME/CFIDS, “my” malady, has taught me
  caution where new infections are concerned.  I avoided close
  contact with Seph, even sanitized my phone before I used it after
  him.  Doug is showing some cold symptoms, but they were passing
  fighting sticks and game controllers back and forth.  His immune
  system is pretty healthy, anyhow.

  I just hoped I would get a free pass on that one, but it didn’t
  happen.  Yesterday, my slow immune system finally kicked in. 
  Fever and body aches were added to the cough, nausea (is it
  flu, I wonder?) and, worst of all, those damned cravings for the
  comfort foods.  Last night, had I not been so weak and helpless,
  I’d have killed for grilled cheese and a mug of tomato soup.

  I might even have grilled myself a forbidden sandwich and nuked a
  cup of soup, too, if I hadn’t been so exhausted from my day of
  traipsing from bed to bathroom.  But I stuck to the damned boring
  healthy nutritious diet.   No known allergens passed these
  lips.  Not one milligram of proscribed sugar or gluten or
  whatever, got into my system. 

  I contented myself with the closest thing to “fun” food I’ve come up
  with:  a very strange sort of nachos made of tortilla chips and
  string cheese.  I ate hard boiled egg and drank endless glasses of
  “sour lemonade”, a little bit of lemon juice in my water, for flavor,
  some extra nutrition and a better pH balance.  I was a goood girl.

  But–I cried.  I sniveled and I cried until it made me cough
  and then I pulled myself together and gave in to the cowardly impulse
  and took some Ibuprofen.  It’s forbidden, too, but what’s the
  prospect of a leaky gut somewhere down the road, compared to the
  prospect of a second night in a row of restless interrupted
  sleep? 

  I slept without interruption.  My fever is down.  It had
  been up over 101 yesterday.  That would be about 103 for a normal
  person, ’cause I’ve got a low baseline temp.  Today, my skin is
  moist and clammy, so I won’t even bother with the thermometer. 

  My brain is foggy, but then I haven’t had any coffee yet, just
  rolled out of bed really.  I need a shower, but I’m so shaky I
  think I’ll wait until Doug wakes so he can carry the little plastic
  camp shower bag down that long hallway after I fill it at the kitchen
  sink.

  When I take a breath, I can feel burbling sensations in my
  lungs.  I can hear the sounds of it, too.  The best word for
  how I feel is yucky, and that’s a whole lot better than how I felt
  yesterday.  My ears are itchy, deep down in my brain, and they’re
  oozing sticky wax–but my eyes aren’t watering as much as they had
  been.  If I can just make it through this infection without caving
  in to the comfort-food cravings, I’ll be okay.

   
  

  • 11:20 am
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