Last July I ended up spending quite a bit of time with the disease ridden offspring of my friends and family. During this time frame I became infected with some horrible upper respiratory ailment, despite the frequent application of hand sanitizer and grain alcohol. Maybe next time I should drink the sanitizer and apply the grain alcohol to my hands.
I soon found myself unable to swallow, having difficulty breathing, and I had a headache that would make my head explode during those unfortunate circumstances when a cough would try to fit its way through my swollen throat. When after two days it became clear that this plague was not going to leave my body of its own accord I quickly carted myself to the urgent care clinic to have my body probed and prodded in hopes that some miracle of modern medicine would hold the key to curing my ailments.
It didn’t.
The first question out of the doctors mouth was “Have you been around any children in the last few days?” and then she informed me that I had a virus that would keep me sick for two to three more weeks.
Great. No cure or treatment. What modern medicine did have, however, was pain killers. Pain killers would at least enable me to sleep, swallow, and possibly even talk again!
I enjoy talking.
So the pain killer regimen started out with a dose of good old Tylenol 3, followed by a prescription for Vicodin. At first I questioned how this would help me recover faster, but soon I didn’t care. I was relaxed. I was sleeping. I was in a really good mood and didn’t care about quality control on goddamn anything. Let me say, for the record, that if I ever had to be addicted to something it would be
Vicodin.
Unfortunately the illness lasted longer than my prescription did. Plus I suffered mild withdrawal symptoms and kept waking up trying to scratch my skin off. The sudden lack in sleep and my already compromised immune system probably contributed to the secondary infection I managed to catch. When all was said and done I was sick for almost a full month.
Thankfully someone saw fit to keep me away from a computer during much of my illness so the crazy incoherent things I was thinking didn’t get mashed into my keyboard and posted here. I would have lost my readers. Both of them.