06.29.2004 - 3:24 p.m.

I have taken sick days before. To clean my room. To sleep in after St. Patrick's Day. To visit the vet, or just to play hooky. But I think yesterday was the first day of my entire adult life that I've called in sick to actually be sick, to stare blearily at the TV between sweaty naps, to stand up several fitful times to trek over to the bathroom, or even more daunting, to the kitchen to feed or water myself.

I was sick in this way once in college, and luckily had an overly-clingy boyfriend happy to nurse me; I also have many warm memories of sickness in childhood, slurping Jell-o or soup while listening to my mother do quiet things like laundry or floor-scrubbing elsewhere in the house.

However, I am sitting here at work today not because I feel a great deal better, but because I can't stand the idea of spending another day trapped on my bed or the couch, surrounded by messes and mail and hobby-projects that I am too fever-weary to even pick up. Being sick alone sucks. Sucks.

And even more than that, I am terrified of spending another set of eight or ten hours letting my mind run amok, wondering if I have meningitis or lyme disease or the bubonic plague. It gets so hard to remember possibilities like "mild flu" or "strep throat" when you are confronted with the chills caused by simply standing, walking four steps to retrieve a remote, and sitting again. and of course it does not help to have to wait until Wednesday for the doctor's visit. I fucking hate losing that control, both of my thoughts and of the littlest necessary tasks in my life.

So I am in my office today where, due to a continuing echo of headache, I've accomplished very little. But I am here. And I will feed the office plants and send off a health insurance check before I go.

Take that, evil life-sucking microbes.

-stonebridge

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