misery without company

I'm a terrible sick person.

Whenever I get ill, I feel like the world's biggest wimp. I cannot handle being sick in any way. I whine, I moan, I become horribly neurotic and high maintenance. Yes, I know many may claim I am that way all the time...it's one of the side-effects of having perpetually low self-esteem. I honestly do strive toward self-sufficiency, and I try to be a good man, a strong man, a worthy man. But when I'm ill, I lose any of the resiliency and cheer to which I aspire. I become a sad, pathetic little man.

I'm always astounded when I accidentally give my wife a cold. I will go through my death-throe convalescence. Then my wife starts to display my symptoms of a few days earlier, and I leap over myself to apologize for infecting her with my death-cold. I promise to be as good to her as she was to me. Then, as her cold progresses, I compare her stages to mine...and I wonder if she just picked up some lesser-variant virus or if I'm as bad of a patient as I suspect. Where I was aching, moaning, holding onto walls, chugging cough syrup, she is light, sprightly, and tough beyond ken.

Now, though, it's infinitely worse. I still ache. I still have to stop my head from spinning when I get up. I still surround myself with a siege-worthy cache of tissues, cough syrup, and canned soup. But instead of just swelling in misery, I'm now dwelling in misery, watching my gorgeous wife care for my gorgeous child, immensely sad that I can't touch either of them, can't kiss either of them, can only love them from afar. The two people I love most are next to me, but I have to keep them at arms (or virus's)-length
.
Sad and lonely indeed.

illness and time

How much is time worth?

Where's the point of no return?

I'm wondering this for several reasons. First, I'm sick and on cough medicine, and that brings back memories. I make it a point to record interesting-looking films from time to time..I want a backlog of them on my dvr for a rainy day...for sick days and such. A few illnesses ago, I watched the classic Soviet science fiction film Solaris. It wasn't particularly wonderful. It looked good, but to call it slow would be an understatement (particularly the massive/eternal/never-ending "driving to the airport" scene). But it had been talked up so much, I felt I had to finish it. Maybe I missed something that further viewing would clarify. Maybe perseverance was the key. Maybe there was some ultimate grand payoff which would bring enlightenment. So I watched.

I finished the film. There didn't seem to be anything with which I could connect. I chalked it down to a difference in cultural attitudes...and the cold and its corresponding medications.

Today, I again have a cold. I went to bed last night with the slight tingling in the throat. I woke up feeling bad. As the day progressed, I felt progressively worse. After my wife went to put my child to sleep for the third time tonight, I was searching my dvr for something to watch. I had already plowed through whatever light, frivolous material I had. I had watched the Bogie-starring vehicle Sahara (which started out with grand pretensions yet ended up not able to become as notable as it dared). I came down to the 2002 Clooney remake of Solaris.

Clooney is one of my favorite actors. I had the relevant cultural context. I was, as when I watched the original, dazzled by the direction, the photography. The film, though was still exceedingly slow. It was like the song which refused to kick into the power chorus. It never improved. Still, I watched. Was it the cold which was doing it? Or did I just consider my illness-addled time to be so valuable as to not waste the thirty minutes or so I had invested?

Is it because my sick time is just not all that valuable? Feeling rotten, apparently, just is not enough.

bone creak

(warning: whining content ahead)

I feel old.

It hasn't always been this way. Until recently, I never really thought of my age. Now, though, I feel it in my bones.

Physically, I'm worn out. On top of my right shoulder pains, I now also have something pulled/torn/silly puttied in my left shoulder...which means my good shoulder now has the unmitigated audacity to hurt more than my bad shoulder. To add a hilarious twist, the exercises which keep my right shoulder at bay seem to exacerbate my left. Do the exercised and increase the pain on one side, or take an exercise break and increase the pain on the other side? Hum.

I'm tired. My progeny unit's erratic sleep schedule is starting to get to me, in spite of my spousal unit taking care of most of the night stuff. Night before last, the progeny unit slept through the night. This is only the second time this has happened. The first time led to about 4 hours of sleep the following night. Yesterday, the pattern of not wanting to sleep at all after a full night's sleep held true, and I fear I might have to tell my daughter she's doing it wrong. Additionally, the erratic sleeping on her part means it was a particularly bad time for my insomnia to return. Moreover, I can't even start on the coffee until she finally wakes up because my burr bean grinder sounds like a jet engine...and I have definitely learned not to wake up an under-rested baby as to not unleash her fury.

Work-wise, I'm disconnected. Summers are normally the time to do writing, reading, research...basically remember why I became an academic. This summer, I have only read thirty pages of one of the dozen scholarly books I brought home from the office, have spent a few hours finding a possible place to submit one of my two unpublished papers (which still required I mail in three physical copies; I resisted the urge to introduce them to e-mail or the 21st century) and failed completely to find a home for the other. Furthermore, I have more or less abandoned my closest-to-being-ready-to-write essay as being too far removed from events to be relevant...much like myself.

Job-wise, I'm stagnant. Yes, I should be thankful to even have a job, but this year, a record number of friends and accomplices found work...in their field...with possible futures. More than one have had encouraging news from book publishers. Me? It has been, unless my memory fails, about four years since I've received anything other than a form rejection from anywhere I've applied. I am at a dead end. I am trying to come to terms with the fact that I will never be anything other than what I am, that there is essentially no longer an upside to my career, but it's hard; in spite of having really known this for years, to have your failure finally driven home? It is wearying. A while back, I used to tell my students that the difference between me and some much smarter MA colleagues was that I was a better worker, which is why I went on to get my PhD and they did not. However, these people do the exact same job as I and started doing so immediately after getting their MA. So the real difference? I have earned less, have higher credit card and student loan bills, yet we have the exact same career path. At least the world respects my highest of academic degrees....right? Right?

Life-wise, I feel I've missed out on so much. Why, I've been asking myself lately, did I not take the two years I took off between getting my two year and four year degree and do something interesting, like move to Colorado? Why did I not follow the lead of some friends and move into some career which would've allowed me to have a house, a new car, a pool table, something that would've meant I'd never have to life in the student ghetto for a decade? It's gotten to the point where I've quit watching any and all home improvement television out of the sheer jealousy and class hatred it evokes.

Socially, I feel isolated. A new crop of faces has entered our college town, and I've met none of them. Several people left our town without having a chance to say goodbye. And the people that are still here? The holdovers? Well, I rarely see anyone. I have one weeknight where I can go out--the Tuesdays at Howards, and this was the first time in weeks I've seen a few of my friends. Others, I haven't seen in close to a month. One friend called me several days last week to invite me out after I told him I couldn't go out anymore.

Yeah, I know. I'm whining again. Moreover, I'm ignoring all the wonderful things that are happening in my life, especially my beautiful spousal unit, my awesome progeny unit, my cool new band. However, I said a while ago I was going to be honest and open...and if you know me, you know whining is part of that honesty.

Last night, I took the second of what turned out to be many attempts to put my daughter to sleep. I picked her up, took her to the bedroom, swaddled her, and she started to scream, to flail. It was one of those times where she just would not be placated, where all of my (normally successful) tricks abandoned me. It's hard enough emotionally to bear her screams in the best of times. She yells with her whole body, her bottom lip starts to quiver, and she gains an Exorcist-esque pitch and timbre. Factor in my flaring shoulders, the mounting insomnia, and I came close to weeping myself.

Please tell me it will get better. Barring that, please tell me I will get tougher.

pushing and pulling

This morning, I got to get up early and go to my physical therapy treatment. I seem to have a case of rotator cuff tendinitis, coupled with mild bicep tendinitis and some impingement...which actually sounds a lot more impressive and bitchin' than it is in reality.

It's one of those annoying injuries, because I don't even know how I injured myself...I just woke up one day in pain. I've been trying to come up with good explanatory stories, such as:

• I pulled it carrying my singer's amplifier (which has the benefit of picking on said singer and making me look like a self-sacrificing kind of guy--neither of which are, in reality, all that fair).
  
• I injured my shoulder playing one of my band's particularly intense songs...meaning I put my physical well-being on the line for my art, man! Rock 'till you hurt!
  
• I had to break up a gang-fight made up of perturbed supermodels, and one of them got some licks in.
  
• I strained it holding up the very integrity of my species (whatever this means).
  

The problem, though, is that since no one believes or even listens to anything I say, such fictive explanations all go for naught.

I do hope that my upcoming P/T schedule will be beneficial. Ultimately, I want to be free of any pain, even of the lingering variety. At the very least, though, I do know it will be a learning experience. I even learned something today, in the first session. As I had my shirt off around two women, and as neither of them threw themselves at me, I learned some very hard truths about how well I'm aging.

Oh, well. I will try to focus on the positives...at least the sight of a shirtless me didn't cause any of the staff to become physically ill.

ways to occupy a sick mind

If I were a superstitious man, I would look upon it all as an extremely bad sign. Spring Break started out mildly enough before moving into a period of the standard workload panic. Then, however, the illness set in.

It started out with only a little sinus drainage leading to a moderately-tingling-to-slightly-sore throat, but that didn't stop me from enjoying my day trips. Then the sore throat ramped itself up to a step above annoying. Then my head turned into pudding, which made Friday's band practice real fun. By the time I got home Friday night, I was spent, except for maybe trying to figure out revenge plans for the person who infected me.

Instead of hanging with friends, making grand strides on my research agenda, perfecting my guitar playing, or even getting ahead on lesson planning, I instead got to finish Spring Break in a state of pure sickness. Productivity, socializing, creativity, all that went out the window. I became a cliche of sorts, swigging dayquil as a wino would attack a fresh bottle of Ripple, curling on the couch under my blankie, vacantly gaping at the television, and generally taking moaning to an Olympic level. Luckily, my darling spousal unit was as kind as usual--if I would've had to put up with a sick me, I would've slapped myself after five minutes--but then again, as anyone whose met her will tell, my spousal unit is infinitely tougher than I.

About the best thing that can be said about the weekend is that I got to really explore some of the crannies of my burned dvd collection. Several Woody Allen films? Check. Indoctrinate spousal unit into the cult of Raging Bull? Check. Watch a seemingly never-ending parade of 50s-60s monster movies while serially tweeting? Oh, you better believe it.

The good thing is that I did learn a heck of a lot from monster movies. For instance, I realized that radioactive slugs from the Salton Sea can kill everyone in the world, as can ants from New Mexico and dinosaurs from the arctic circle. I learned that animals infected and mutated by radiation never seem to be the cute ones. I learned that the general public will inevitably wait until the monster hits their immediate vicinity before beginning to scream and run in panic. I learned that the proper response to anyone suffering a state of crisis is to offer them a cigarette. I learned that wherever there are two scientists, one of them will be an old man, while the other one will be a tremendously hot female. Finally, I learned that Them! is infinitely better than most of its competition.

Of course, none of this is knowledge which I will never really have an opportunity to apply...which, now that I think about it, is probably a metaphor for my life in some way.

roid rage

Earlier, I moaned and whined about getting a cold at the end of summer (I know what you're thinking...Mike? Complaining? I know...it just doesn't sound like me). I started out on Aug. 13 just feeling slightly icky with a sore throat. Then I started to feel get all fevery and dizzy. It was quite depressing, mostly because I knew, deep down inside, that it really was not the result of too much partying or something.

I spent time laying on the couch. I watched more HGTV than any man should bear. I realized just how tougher than I is my darling spousal unit. Moreover, however, I spent a lot of time not doing the paper I had started...fever dreams and academics, I long ago learned, do not really go togethe all that well.

After about a week, the fevers and ickiness generally went away. However, the cough was refusing to budge. I seemed to notice that the more I talked, the worse it got, so I tried to avoid spouting off my opinions whenever I had an audience. However, the cough still didn't completely go away. The only real change is that my friends seemed happier to see a less talkative me.

I started teaching this week, and for me, that involves long periods of using The DuBose Teacher Voice, which can be, if I might say, an awesome entity. Yet my throat was suffering for it. I decided that, rather than adapting all the other Tom Waits mannerisms (which I couldn't really do anyway...I don't have a good hat), I would finally break down and go see the doctor.

He told me that I most likely had a viral thing (his words), but it had gone away. My throat and sinuses were still inflamed, however, so he gave me a stepped dose of a steroid/anti-inflammatory. When I mentioned this on my Twitter feed, I was bombarded by friends (?) pelting me with horror stories about steroid side effects. I half expected to turn into the Hulk (the Incredible or Hogan...either/or) by the end of the day. My only solace in this was that if I were to go all green, bloated, and rampaging, at least there was a good chance it would happen while I was teaching. If nothing else, that would cut down on disciplinary problems amongst the students.

There were no side effects that I noticed while at work. When the day of teaching had finally ended (around 9:45...yes, PM...damn class schedules), I drove home while blasting Green Day, and I noticed my throat was too sore from five hours of giving Exclusive Command Teaching Performances to sing along. It lessened the effect, for sure.

Then, a while after arriving in the arms of beautiful spousal unit, after giving time for my mind to supposedly calm down post-teaching, I went to bed. This is when things started to change. Now, I've had mild insomnia issues for some time. I've always had nights where my brain wouldn't shut off. Last night was definitely one of them, but with the added twist of thinking of random stuff at an extremely high speed. My brain was pulling all its normal tricks (getting caught into obscure song lyrics, trying to find new uses for bratwurst, composing a musical on the life of Asian Dawn leader Hans Gruber* but as if sung by chipmunks), but it was doing it at auctioneer rate, as if someone had tripped my mind's switch to 78. Of course, this made sleep nigh-near difficult.

So far, though, this could be traced to simple hangover from week one of teaching. Then everything subtly changed. As I lay there, trying to block out my brain while not disturbing my slumbering, wildebeest-snoring spousal unit, I realized that I could feel my head. I mean, I could really feel my head. I started being able to feel just my left ear (and its surrounding areas) in excruciating detail. Then I was also able to feel a bit of the back of my neck. There was one patch of hair in particular where I could feel the spikes at the end of the follicles. My head swayed and tingled. This might've been enjoyable if I at least had a Tommy Chong-esque "wow, man" attitude to go with it, but when you couple it with a brain which can't quit analyzing fictional animal musicals, it was less than enjoyable...somewhere on the road to annoying, if you wanna know the truth.

Eventually, the sensations in my head started to fade, and the conversations in my brain, while not really going away, at least had the decency to bore me into slumber (giving me the added benefit of knowing how my friends, when around me, generally feel. Waking up was relatively hard today, but so far, no lingering steroid side-effects.

At least I know know how professional athletes feel.

* ten points for the first person to get this reference.

on health, causality, and indulgence

Ever since I was a wee lil' tike, I've always confounded doctors and annoyed friends with my normal propensity to health. This started with my teeth.

Like everyone, I was given lots of instructions on proper tooth care. I saw the goofy films in elementary school. I had teachers and dentists alike demonstrate proper flossing technique on oversized demonstration dentures. One year, they even gave us these pills which, when we sucked on them after brushing, supposedly showed all the plaque we missed by making it purple. I was assured that proper dental hygiene would surely mark the difference between a life of friends, women, fame, and fortune, and a life lived in a cardboard box in a gutter of a ghetto, with only a rabid mouse for company.

In spite of all this cajoling and instruction, I took minimal care of my teeth while a troublesome youth. I brushed swiftly, without purpose. I found flossing vexing and tedious, so I abandoned it for months at a time. Yet I still didn't get cavities. While my siblings were getting their teeth drilled, I would laugh, having learned that the road to happiness and well being lay in total and absolute sloth.

Similarly, with my health, I never broke a bone. I would get colds, but I never had much worse. I never needed my tonsils removed. I never had chicken pox. And I never got rabies, tapeworms, or elephantiasis...of any region.

It was only after realizing I was getting old (thanks to a cute chick I met my first year in Ohio, who loved repeatedly reminding me of my ancientness) that I started to really think about taking care of myself. There were, however, problems. First, I was working for my Ph.D., so anything save reading and writing did not fit into my schedule. Then there was the related health care crisis (short version: it sucked, then I had none). When I finally got good insurance, I felt physically worn down. Additionally, thanks to the general inertia of the scholarly lifestyle (and breakfasts consisting of a whole slab of deep-fried bacon wrapped around a stick of butter), I had gained roughly 437 pounds. It was with a certain amount of trepidation and fear that I was able to schedule a physical to see exactly how far I had slipped.

I reserved time with a general practitioner, a dentist, and an opthamologist. I was poked, prodded, x-rayed, stabbed, and bled. They cut open my head to check on the state of its internal parts.

How did I fare? In spite of everything, there were no problems. Even though I had lived on a grad school diet for years, my cholesterol and all that were fine. My vision was no worse than ever. Even my teeth were relatively solid.

I've been thinking about all of this for a few reasons. First off has been my recent string of summertime injuries (2008's knee then foot, and 2009's toe) have left me shaken. They've also left me wondering if my body, much like my students, is now engaged in a full-blown effort to make me feel old.

That's not all, though. Last week, I was deep into the "friends are visiting, leaving, moving in" week-long drinking binge/spree/lifestyle. Every night for eight days, I found myself either at a bar, a porch, or a street corner, with adult beverages on the agenda. Now I enjoy drinking more than most, but this stretch of bar time, fueled by special occasions and guests, began to feel relentless. Every morning, my stomach felt mildly uncertain and my head felt like cotton. I was losing the ability to focus on anything other than "this is what touring musicians must feel like all the time...no wonder many second albums suck." I surprisingly never had a monstrous hangover the entire week (no splitting headache, no spinning rooms), yet in spite of this, I was getting sick of the daily feeling of uncertainty, both mentally and physically.

I was actually looking forward to my first night of sobriety, when no one would call, asking if I wanted beer, a cigar, or both. I was looking forward to going to bed sober, waking up sober, doing actual work. I was looking forward to reaping the benefits of clean, healthy living.

Of course, I immediately got a cold. And, wouldn't you know, it's not going away all that quickly. Ever since I quit my binge, I've had minor yet persistent mucus production, a sore throat, a transient feverish haze, and a general feeling of "woah" that's prevented me from doing much of anything.

I'm officially sick of it. I'm sick of feeling weird. I'm sick of sitting on the couch watching television. I've seen more HGTV than I can stand. I'm sick of not being able to do much of my own, very necessary, extremely time-sensitive work. I'm sick of the Oscar Wilde-esque fever dreams.

The worst part of all this, however, is that I can't even find a decent metaphor or meaning in all this. "Quit drinking and you will get sick" is not something I really want to believe. "The summer will always end in tears and misery" is too depressing, even for me. I can't shake the comment of a girl I knew in high school, who always told me that I didn't have a cold, it was my brain melting out of my head...but I'm really hoping that one's not right either.

Today's thought is that maybe the drinking then getting sick thing might be connected in some way. Maybe cause is starting to finally catch up with effect. Behavior finally starts yielding results. Baudrillard was wrong.

I certainly hope not. But even if the return of causality is the only lesson to be learned here, I just wish it wouldn't have manifested itself on my health. The end of summer is not, after all, the ideal time to dwell on one's lack of invincibility.

diagnosis

I have, for two weeks, been suffering through what I've dubbed "The Cold That Will Not Die" (and yes, the capitalization is important). It's bad...I even canceled a class last week, and that's something I never do. I tried Mucinex, but no mucus was moved (stubborn phlegm!). I tried Zicam, but the cold did not speed up. I've been going through boxes of echinacea tea, but the only thing that's done is make my breath all herb-y. Chicken soup has been of no help. I've been ill so long, I'm seriously thinking about finding a voodoo specialist to see if they can help.

So after my spousal unit telling me that she'd brain me if I woke her up coughing at 4am one more time (she's actually been really sweet and concerned about the whole deal, but that doesn't make a good story), I made a doctor's appointment yesterday. First, though, I had to get through three classes, and my throat was raw like sushi afterwards...and I found myself flying through the lecture parts because I just wanted to get home and lay under my blankie. I did note, however, that I have several students who have also been sick for several weeks, and each of them has not yet missed a class because they were at home laying under their respective blankies...no, they were tough, tougher than I.

(incidentally, for one of my readers, they only become blankies when you are ill...I'll accept no childish names otherwise)

My appointment was this morning, and I came away with a startling (for me) revelation: doctor's offices are full of sick people! But you get a better class of sick people at a clinic then you would at, say, an urgent care place.

My doctor thinks it's my sinus infection holding on, even though the symptoms are totally different...but, as one doctor to another, I guess I'll have to offer the professional courtesy to give him the benefit of doubt and see if his drugs will work before I offer a contradictory judgment, even though I strongly suspect some type of super-flu.

If this really is the sinus infection holding on, then I've been sick for a while now. Most of the time, though, I don't find it painful or debilitating but merely annoying. The throat doesn't bother me too much if I don't talk (one wonders how the spousal unit feels about this), and my biggest inconvenience is finding somewhere to dispose of the used tissues...but that's bad enough to make me want this to just go the heck away.

When horror novels talk of super viruses, they always end up being immediately lethal, with the victims dying slowly under mountains of mucus and phlegm. What's probably a more realistic scenario, and one that I personally predict, would be if the victims just had really bad colds that never got better. Society would grind to a halt, because everyone would be at home drinking herbal tea and laying under their blankies instead of working. What industry would be left would center on tissue production, and the tattered remains of our government would be run by the Kleenex family, who would open our national forests to harvesting so they might have enough paper to meet the increasingly steep demand for said tissues. Chicken soup would become the mandatory meal for everyone until we as a nation ran out of chickens. Humanity as we know it would collapse first in the Great Chicken Soup Riots of 2010, Puffs and Kleenex would then, as the only two remaining superpowers, get locked into open warfare, and the battles would rage until we all suffocate because the last tree in existence got cut down for tissue raw materials. When the space aliens finally arrive a decade later, all they find is a mound of used herbal teabags and a pile of medical waste.

Maybe that's just the phlegm talking, though.

throat all throbby-throbby

Last Tuesday, while at school, I noticed that I was starting to feel all drunk/stoned...but just the unpleasant aspects. As I had been "living clean" for a few days, this came as a bit of a surprise to me. Then I realized it must be some kind of cold in the early stages. Needless to say, this put a bit of a damper on "Speak Like A Pirate" day.

Later that night, I started to cough. I kept coughing. Coughing, in my body's opinion, then took precedence over things I would rather be doing, such as sleeping. I kept coughing...and it was, most disappointingly, non-productive coughing. Finally, Sunday night, as I tried to watch football and ignore my throbbing, glowing throat, I decided that perhaps, yes, I did in fact need to go to the doctor.

Got up early Monday, got an appointment for 10:45 am and thanked the heavens that I actually finally have health insurance. Finally saw the doctor at 11:50. After examining me, he told me that I had acute bronchitus. This was a relief, because at first, I thought he was coming on to me ("I have a cute what???").

Now on drugs...antibiotics that "run through me" and give me stomach cramps, and a cough syrup which is clearly codeine...which, if I were ever really going to be a druggie, might be my drug of choice...

While I am thankful that the healing may finally begin, special thanks needs to be extended towards my spousal unit for not kicking me out of bed during a 4am coughing fit.

I become non-contagious on Wednesday. Watch out, world.