Tis the Season to Feel Like Ass!
Mood:  spacey
Now Playing: Basia
As I post this from lung cookie central, I fear I may be dying. In fact, I don’t fear it, I wish for it with every aching fiber of my flu-infested being! So someone get your ass over here and put me out of my misery!

When my sis and I arrived at the ‘rents’ pad for Christmas frivolities, mom and pops were hardcore sick--hacking, dripping, sounding like Brenda Vaccaro after a carton of smokes, etc. You know. Sick as fricking dogs! My sister turned, looked at me and said “We’re so fucked!” and as usual, she was right.

I felt fine all through the Christmas. Woke up Monday with a bit of a narfy chest deal but put that off to a late night ‘dog walk’ of ‘stinkerbell’ (Belle), my sister’s lab puppy.

By Tuesday, I knew the high hard one of illness was coming to smack me upside the head and all I could do was try to prepare for the onslaught. It must be how those poor bastards in trailer parks feel after hearing a twister warning. There’s nothing to do but hunker down with provisions and ride it out.

So I hit the market, the drug store and the video store in rapid succession for necessities before I lost strength and succumbed to the creeping crud. Airborne, Emer’gen-C (I’m telling you that stuff is a multipurpose champion!), Alka Seltzer cold & flu, gallons of Gatorade, gallons of juice, and movies. I start taking the Airborne and Emer’gen-C immediately. Take a hot tub. Hoping to sweat it out and, unrealistically, avoid the ick.

Well, that didn’t work.

Wednesday. Day from Hell. Ground Zero. Flu hits hardcore. Head feels like 50lb toddler is playing dodge ball with it. Sinuses have apparently been packed with rusty steel wool. I am shivering and freezing even though I am ensconced in fleece footie jammies, encrusted in Vick’s vapor rub, holed up under the covers. Coughing, which I am doing a shitload of, hurts. Moving hurts. Opening my eyes hurts. Hearing hurts. Being me hurts. If is official. I feel like ass. I am down for the count.

A hot tub would have been nice. Too bad that I hadn’t the strength to get in one but a bonus, in some small way, as I probably would not have had the strength to get back out. Seriously. I would have ended up as Meg-O-stew after parboiling for 14 hours or so before somebody found me…. or the dogs and cats ate me…. or something else a la Stephen King (which is actually what went through my fevered and delirious mind as I pondered a hot tub). Hey, I’ve heard it happens….pets eating you and all, not the parboiling in a hot tub bit.

I opt for sleep. Lots of it.

Thursday. I am barely existing in my misery. Ever growing heaps of snot rags litter my house. The piles on the nightstand and coffee table are especially impressive. Must think about getting a trash can when it doesn’t hurt to think. I am single handedly adding to the deforestation of Costa Rica by the snot infested fistful.

Can my misery be any more complete? Why yes, it surely can!

Thursday afternoon. I was still at flu threat level red. I heard some strange high pitched whining noise like a small animal being tortured. As I strain to figure out where it’s coming from, I realize it’s the sound of my own breath, rasping in and out of my chest that I hear. My ears are ringing. My joints hurt. I go into a coughing fit. I am coughing and heaving like no body’s biz. And can I tell you about the pain? Oy! It felt like my chest was on fire and I thought for a minute, I was going to pass out—it hurt that bad. You know, where your chest is all congested and you start that dry wracking cough and can’t stop? It just burns like nobody’s business.

So here I am, coughing my fool head off, when my house was suddenly infested with barking spiders (AKA fart attack: instead of blaming it on the dog, our family blames it on barking spider infestations) and next thing you know, and there’s no way to put this delicately, I suddenly felt something oddly warm and wet. Huh?! WTF? Well, I’d done soiled myself. Yup. Coughed so hard, I pooped my pants. Interesting that I was unaware I had the trots until that moment. Moderate leakage, but still unauthorized--an oop-poop so to speak (REMEMBER: NEVER trust a fart and PULEEZE, like it’s never happened to you—it’s mortifying, but funny)

So I freaked out! Classic understatement--I completely wigged out!!! I stumbled into the bathroom, still coughing, dragged my aching self over to the toilet and whipped down my sweats to check out the collateral damage, when I cough. I cough hard. I cough so unbelievable hard that my gag reflex kicks in and I hurl. That’s right. I roark up a roiling mass of Gatorade and God knows how many sundry cough and cold products and proceed to puke between my legs, right into the soiled sweatpants that were bunched down around my ankles as I sat on the toilet.

Yeah. Good times I tell you. Not. I have a much higher level of appreciation now for the party stunts my body is capable of performing. This one took the cake! I was a wretched beast to say the least!

Needless to say, the sweats were bagged up and dumped (pun intended) into the trash receptacle as there was no way I was going to try to recover them at that point--futile and disgusting thought there.

I wearily forced myself into a hot shower and managed to cleanse. I rolled into fresh jammies and poured my still horrified self bonelessly back into bed before I passed out for another 12 hours of sleep.

Friday. I faced the day knowing there was no way it could be as bad as yesterday. I mean, there’s no way anything can match shitting and puking your drawers almost simultaneously (I think I’ll call it the ‘up dump’ for the upchuck dump). Nice. Having said that, I then commenced to stress out wondering if I had just jinxed myself to another day of feeling like ass and the possibility of a repeat performance of the ‘up-dump’.

I feel better. I must have as I attempted to eat a bowl of cereal puffs. Bad idea. Ever tried to eat cereal when you can’t breathe through your nose? Yeah. ‘Zactly. Surprised I didn’t die although there were some rather close calls….I am down to a flannel nightshirt and red furry house scuffs. My nose resembles said furry house scuffs being a rather violent shade of red at this point. Head is still pounding at a level on par with a minor construction site noise sans the heavy duty jackhammer.

It boded well. I attempted a minor sojourn out for errands. Bad idea. Major, major space monkey driving behavior commenced. You know you get in the car, you arrive at your destination and have no idea how you got there AKA Autopilot. Not good. At my first stop, I start feeling all sweaty and faint. Time to head home.

At this rate, my New Years plans are completely verklempt. There is no way in Hell without substantial improvement that I will be doing ANYTHING for New Years Eve except feeling like ass!

Have one or twelve for me….I'm not going anywhere fast....