flu pig

warning: this post written by someone who may or may not be delirious due to fever and medication.

i have the flu. my doctor says it doesn't really matter, that whatever kind i have i'll be well from it before the tests come back. pig or no pig. treatment is the same for healthy folks like me no matter what the animal. stay home until the fever has been gone 24 hours. drink loads of fluids. take tamiflu.

so here i am, melting in the ears, my eyelashes and toenails aching, crackling, my skeleton trying to escape the boiling cauldron that is me. the dogs have been helping by piling themselves on top of me, probably to keep my skeleton from getting out. my hair hurts. my eyes have fallen out more than once and guthrie has brought them back for me. each time they fall out, lava flows from the sockets a while. lava eye hurts plenty.

there is a horrible rash on my chest, a rash you might have seen illustrated in a very old post, that crawls up my neck, a thick slab of red to indicate, probably, the places my skeleton has slammed against the inside of me in its attempts to escape. or perhaps it's where the flu pig attacked me to get into my poor miserable self. or where it's oozing back out after depleting me of all my healthy innards, as flu pigs do, of course. either way, it's pretty likely some sort of awful portal for something coming or going. one of those ever swinging saloon-type kitchen doors. a turnstile of hideous suffering.

the sweetie took the day off to take me in to see my doctor. going on a train at rush hour with possible flu pig is just irresponsible. so we drove in, spent more than ten minutes in a tunnel and the entire rest of the day in a rain so heavy it helped me understand what sheets of rain means. on the way back home, i read the tamiflu box. i have a terrible habit of reading the medical info sheets on whatever medication someone suggests i try. this has been helpful on several occasions, the scariest of which was when a doctor gave me something she called a "wonder drug" developed for the army to keep troops awake for extended periods in the field. hint: don't ever take a drug developed for the army. especially if it's called provigil. especially if it's being prescribed to amp you up from three other drugs your doctor has swirling around on your insides. in fact, find yourself a doctor who causes less swirling.

but this tamiflu warns a flu pig victim to freak out upon developing a rash. what am i supposed to do if i already have this rash? the doctor mentioned that if i became nauseous or started vomiting i should freak out and call for help, but the tamiflu box said the drug would cause nausea and vomiting in some. the pharmacist told me to eat a lot of food to keep this from happening. i've shoveled in a steady stream of pepperoni pizza just to be on the safe side. then there's dizziness. look, my natural state is dizziness. a cup of tea makes me dizzy. taking my meds without enough protein makes me dizzy. pms makes me dizzy. walking over a bridge makes me dizzy. how on earth am i to know whether any dizziness i might get is tamiflu related or just me? but my favorite special side effects are, basically, hallucination and mental disorientation. look. i take a medication to keep those things at bay. i'm hoping it will just sidle up to the tamiflu and mention that's why it's floating around in my body. "i don't want no trouble, man. you do your job, i'll do mine." says my all-the-time medication to the tamiflu. perhaps the mental disorientation has begun.

i am already hostile to the tv. i can't read because my eyes and brain aren't working together that well. knitting is out because of the fact that my hands feel like they have a very fancy form of arthritis. i will not go to school tomorrow. i will lie around on the couch another day, accompanied by dogs. and maybe a few penguins, if my hallucinations are good.