The ginger didn’t really help

Well, I should have known. There were a bunch of little signs, like that on Monday I couldn’t get warm, no matter how hard I tried, or that in the morning I didn’t want coffee, and that in the evening I turned down a glass of wine. That night when I went to bed I had a fever and a bit of a cough, and on Tuesday morning when I woke up, I had a whole bunch of a cough. That evening it was all I could do to play “let’s pretend to be sleeping” games with Lou, and by the time I got home after dinner, the whole scene couldn’t be denied any longer. I was sick. Hugely, magnificently sick, and I did what I usually do, which is tuck up into bed with a bit of knitting (more for holding, than for knitting) and tried to sleep, and drank four thousand cups of tea, took some herbal stuff that usually feels great,  and hoped for the best.

I held on like that until this morning, when after yet another sleepless night, and ribs sore from coughing and a fever and chills still raging, I did something that I almost never, ever do.  I went to the doctor. She walked in, saw me there and said “Well, I never see you!” and I did something I’m really not too proud of. First, I cried (that’s the lack of sleep talking, I’m sure of it, I’m normally a lot stronger) and then (through hacks, wheezing and tears) I said “Listen, there comes a time when even a hippy has to say F- you, slippery elm bark tea” and asked for help.

sirensong 2016-01-21

(That’s what I’m knitting, by the way. It’s the Siren Song wrap – though I’m doing it out of laceweight, so it won’t be as big as all that, and it’s going reasonably well, considering that the last few days I’ve had problems with counting.)

Help she did. I’m home again, with a few modern drugs that have already helped a whole lot. I can (mostly) breath again, I’m just about to lie down for a nap and think I might actually sleep, rather than just lying there on a raft of self-pity that was sinking fast. I’m having (another) cup of slippery elm tea, because – well, I’m still me… and a bit of a knit. More tomorrow when I’m assuming the modern medicine I so frequently mock will have healed me entirely.