Sick Leave
This is going to be a quick one.
I’m dying.
All right, maybe an overstatement but it sure felt that way this weekend and even as I write, I’m only halfway back following Tangina’s voice who knows where.
Over the weekend, more specifically at 10:06 p.m. EST Friday January 25, 2008 I contracted the flu. In my entire life, any time I have gotten sick, I have always woken with an illness. I go to sleep feeling a little worse for the wear and then wake up with full blown ebola. That’s the M.O. I’m accustomed to.
This time, it was like flipping a light switch. I felt fine all evening until I stepped outside to bring the dogs out. As I was out there, I felt a real deep chill. When I stepped back into the house, I couldn’t stop shivering. I decided right there to go to bed - maybe if I hid under the covers, I could hide from the boogeyman who had found me out there in the deep, dark night.
The next morning, I woke freezing. I took some Tylenol, threw on enough layers to do the Michelin Man proud and eventually my body temperature returned to normal. But all I had done was bought a Freedom Pass to this roller coaster. 2 hours of bone chilling cold followed by 2 hours of heat; rinse and repeat. Though I was popping a cocktail of Tylenol, Mortrin and some Midol for good measure, like some second-rate Max Payne, I couldn’t keep the chills or fever at bay for long.
Sunday was a repeat of Saturday. No change except I was trapped on the couch with nothing but sportscaster after sportscaster using the Buffer Zone Sunday before the big game to subliminally broadcast their inane ramblings into my head. I don’t know why this happens, but any time someone mentions the word “Asterick” I start predicting Giants 52 - Patriots 7. Weird!!!
Yesterday, I mosied into work to get my laptop, got trapped on a conference call before I finally made an exit - promising everyone I wouldn’t be back until I had this thing licked. My attendance has been sterling with only one sick day in 2007 and zero in 2006. So what if we’re only 29 days into 2008. Ya’ can’t plan for these things.
As it were, I know who infected me. It was someone, who despite his raging illness that had he not advertised by coughing, sneezing and spewing all manner of midichlorians during a meeting last Wednesday, he broadcast loud and clear by saying in this dumb sing-songy voice “You DON’T Want to Sit Next to Me.” Yeah, what a hero trouping into the office for our benefit!!! So, we got limited productivity out of that dude and now we lose who knows how much more productivity from all the drones he infested. Not everyone has a laptop nor the dumb desire to head into work to procure it. I’m sure we have a population just dying to catch up on Ellen.
Oh well, for the next day or two I’m sitting this one out. I awoke this morning on antibiotics (I have some nasty infection in my lungs) with a raging sinus headache and the sudden inability to breathe very well. I’ll check my e-mails from home, get some things done but until I have the energy back, I’m not heading back.
Assuming I survive.
Like this post? Save or share it with these social tools:
This post has 13 comments (now closed):
Tuesday, January 29, 2008 9:20 am
That sucks–feel better, Ed!
Tuesday, January 29, 2008 10:59 am
Yeah man, get better soon. Like Thursday soon so that we can still have Guy’s Night Out and not be infected…
I hate people that go to work with an obviously contagious flu. A simple cold is one thing, but with a flu, keep your butt home for your sake and your co-workers. No one is that valuable!
PS: Happy Bloganniversary too. Today marks two years.
Tuesday, January 29, 2008 11:28 am
Good thing I posted today. I hadn’t a clue today was the official 2 year anniversary.
I think Beer is a Cure-All so I’m pretty hopeful I’ll be coming out on Thursday - plus that will be like 6 Days of Illness by that point so I gotta’ be feeling better by that point, right!!!
Tuesday, January 29, 2008 2:06 pm
Keep popping those prescribed meds and they’ll do the trick… usually.
I was going to remind you about it last night, but we weren’t on XBL at the same time. Also, as you might have noticed, no new design to start off Year Three… but, soon-ish!
Tuesday, January 29, 2008 3:27 pm
I’ve been going to bed each night around 9:30 p.m. so I assume all my XBLing has been done well before you’ve made your appearance on the stage.
Tuesday, January 29, 2008 5:04 pm
Nyquil and beer work the same way…lots and they give you a REAL good nights sleep..one way or another see you Thursday!!!
Tuesday, January 29, 2008 8:27 pm
My total and complete sympathies…
About 4 years ago, I got the flu, at almost the exact time as yours. Having laughed in the face of flu shots, I found myself huddled in a wingback, wrapped in comforters, imploring Ron to sacrifice the burner and the bank accounts and TURN UP THE HEAT! I also lived off 1/2 ginger ale, 1/2 water, and despite 2 half-fulls, my view of the world was that the glass was completely and utterly…empty. I sat in that chair for 10 days, no TV, no books, no video games, staring only at the left arm of the brand new sofa, whose pattern and carefully chosen colors I had come to loathe. Ron insisted on taking me to the doctor, and it was a scene out of a movie…the chairs cleared as the less-ill searched for open air, huddled in the furthest corner of the waiting room. I never , ever want to be that sick again, but in view of the fact that I lost 18 pounds…and I do have that wedding coming up…I am willing to risk it and inhale some of your foul infected germs, if you want to blow into a test-tube and mail them on over. They might be intercepted at the Post Office, and you would have to lie about mailing anything nasty, but that would be up to you.
Take your time to get well, get strong, so that you can take care of Andi when she gets it.
Tuesday, January 29, 2008 8:59 pm
Here’s the deal. She won’t get it. Because she, and Colin, and Aria all did their familial duty and got flu shots and I bagged out in favor of a Pats game. While I can’t name names, let’s just say that a relative unrelated to me by blood was able to procure flu shots on an annual basis due to their particular position of employment. So every year, right around Thansgiving, just before this person could inject me with 22,000 CCs of triptofan, they would sucker-stick me with the flu shot in my right python (the muscle I lovingly refer to as Tango - I’m sure y’all have met Cash).
Anyway, this year, the shots arrived early. On the day we were all gonna’ get our “treats”, I had a date with this site’s Webmaster to see the Pats decimate the Skins, so I snuck out of that house by the skin of my teeth before she could prick my skin. (I don’t know what I was trying to work into that sentence more - the word “skin” or the word “prick”?). Anyway, here we are months later, the CDSC has derailed my own personal Underground Railroad and I’m stuck here miserable. At least, I’m starting to form sentences so I guess that’s something.
Anyway, Aunt Sharon, I’m not sure it would be wise for me to hock a lugie in an envelope and send it special delivery. The last time I shipped a carton of Hostess Donettes to Mookie, I was up to my ass in Cipro and he was living the life of the Bubble Boy.
A naked Mookie in a celophane bubble will make anyone sick.
Tuesday, January 29, 2008 10:37 pm
<fun-hearted-rant>
No offense to you or Jason, but why must I be referred to as “Webmaster” instead of by name? Are you guy’s ashamed to put “Sean” or “OB1″ in your posts? For the record, I hate the term and it is sorta obsolete in this day and age. If you must avoid the use of my name — and of course, I encourage dropping my name at all available occasions — then you could use “Developer”, “Coding Monkey” or “Diva”.
</fun-hearted-rant>
Based upon your current condition, I’d say that Skins game wasn’t worth it, especially since it was over at kickoff…
By the way, that lead picture is awesome. You continually find gems like this on the interwebs. Me likey.
Tuesday, January 29, 2008 11:18 pm
@ Sean…perhaps “WebGod” would be more to your liking? Or did Bill Gates get that one?
Wednesday, January 30, 2008 10:52 am
I almost had that one at the end of my list, but I thought it was too presumptuous. Even though I am.
Also, I think Al Gore lays claim to that title, not Bill Gates. It goes along with the inventing the internets and stuff…
Wednesday, January 30, 2008 6:48 pm
Ah, right, Bill just invented the conduit through which the internet flows.
And that worked out pretty well for him.
Friday, February 1, 2008 7:33 am
Hey Ed…feeling better?? Will you be posting Lost reviews again this year?? Why isn’t it here yet?