I'm Sick

I'm sick. Have had several things going on lately. A headache that explodes whenever I do something slightly physically demanding and most of all when I do intimate things, simply put. Also, I have a cold and a fever, but on top of that I have a cough. A tickling dry sensation in my throat that gets worse by coughing. It doesn't hurt, it's just there, making me cough and cough. Especially, of course, during the night and when I lie down.

This night I had to go throw up just because I coughed so much. I didn't feel sick or anything, I just coughed so much my body probably thought there was something stuck in my throat. Fun. After that, it kept itching. I've even popped some pills; one especially that's supposed to affect the coughing center of the brain. It doesn't really work.

So, instead of laying in the bed I have to sit up and sleep. I've slept some 3 hours so far. It reminds me of when I had this a few years back. I coughed in my sleep so much that my throat cramped, and I couldn't breathe. Imagine waking up in the middle of the night, realizing you can't get any oxygen at all, then having to climb over a partner and down the bed ladder, and naked running through the student corridor onto the balcony where you try to cough and cough and cough but without getting any air for a minute (which felt like an eternity) all the while the body tries to evacuate whatever might be stuck in the throat. No fun.

Needless to say, I'm scared of sleeping when I am like this. Though, as it looks now it's impossible to sleep when I cough. Except when I sit up. For some reason it doesn't itch as much - but it does itch.

An interesting part of this is that my brain seems to want to explain what's going on in the most bizarre ways. Yesterday I had been at a friend's place watching him play Silent Hill 3. When I tried to sleep, my brain wanted to somehow connect my inability to sleep with me playing Silent Hill 3 where I was trying to find the best way out of a maze while being chased by pyramid head. It wasn't even a nightmare. I remember waking up a few times, and then the "final" time I shook my head and told myself "hey, come on, I'm awake - the whole Silent Hill thing is just bullshit, it's not real, what I should focus on is to sleep comfortably".

This night, it's the same thing. Whenever I try to sleep, trying to find some new position where I perhaps don't cough as much, my brain tries to connect that with something else.

Like, when I try to find a good position, I'm helping the characters in the series Lost to set up various perimiters and defenses in the jungle. When I finally shook that out of my head, it switched to trying to clean the backs of books. And then boxes. And letting different body parts sleep. And even though I'm fully aware that it's really stupid, my brain falls back onto it again and again. I just can't think to myself that "I'm now going to try to sleep" - the mission is much deeper than that.

I suppose it's the fever playing tricks on me, and maybe it's a nice way to put my mind on something else for a while.

I hope this'll pass soon. I can take an exploding headache and a fever and a running nose, but this itching throat... it's just too much.

Where I got all this from? I don't know, but one should remember that my partner was sick (he's working with teenagers...) and I have a job and I go to school. In school, I always try to sit as far up in the front as I can which means that any coughing and sneezing from the others in the classroom will hit me. Having the science of viruses and stuff in mind, I don't currently dress too lightly to affect my immune system (in contrary to popular superstition). I also know that when I dress more heavily it's more difficult to move and I lose my breath more easily leading to me breathing with my mouth (to "catch up") instead of my nose which more or less means no air filtering. Knowing that viruses usually enter through the nose and mouth, and knowing my own body heat make no difference in the virus' cold-induced increased capacity to pass my defenses, the way I dress really makes no difference. Spare me the theories that build upon the old and incorrect name "to catch a cold" please.

I'll try to sleep again. I wish I had some nice Nyponsoppa.