Free Write 8

I've been sick for the last couple days, as you might have been able to guess by yesterday's post, which honestly makes it pretty hard to focus on anything other than the fact that I'm sick. Even if I'm doing anything else, I'm constantly aware of my throat or my nose or my head, all of which are doing things that they really shouldn't be doing under normal circumstances. Coincidentally, I'm also constantly making mistakes while I'm typing. Not to say that I don't normally, but some of the mistakes that I make...

The worst part about it is that it's not super consistent. I'll spend a couple hours with a runny nose and excessive sneezes, and then it will have changed to a very dry nose and throat, and then out of nowhere I'll have a headache. I feel like I'm just in this constant flux of discomfort, and as much as I'd love to just sleep it off, it keeps me awake at night.

And even once I'm asleep, I have these really weird dreams. Like, weirder than the dreams that I normally have. My dreams are normally some kind of fantasy or weird twist on the real world, taking the things that I know and do and stopping them with something insane. But when I'm sick, it's like you take those dreams, put them on an impervious tv in an earthquake, and hand a five year old on energy drinks the remote. Everything is flipping around, speeds are changing, focus flips from one place to another with no continuity or logic. By the time I wake up, I can't remember anything that happened, but I know it wasn't right.

But honestly, worse than how I feel, I hate how being sick prevents me from doing things. I had to call out sick at work yesterday, and as nice as that may sound, it irritated me. I haven't been able to work out. It's hard to focus on any games I try to play. I can't even sing if I drive somewhere, because my throat is constricted and keeping the air out, so I get short of breath from a single line in a song. I can't sleep - not that I ever could in the first place.

Instead I just pop cough drops into my mouth constantly and hope that they can tide me over for a time until I have to pop another one. Sometimes they help, and sometimes they don't. But nothing else will do anything, because my body just refuses to be affected by medicine. Advil, dayquil, whatever. I could probably overdose on them and be unaffected. And good lord, do I hate it. Even when I'm put under by some heavy duty knock out gas, I wake up before doctors expect me to and can move just fine almost immediately. And I say that from experience.