Sorry its been so long, I'm bbaaccckkk

Man I HATE FLUE SEASON !!

For as far as I've come with my ADD recovery periodically I'm reminded that I still have room to grow. Which is a long way of saying, I screwed-up by not posting anything in a while and I'm sorry. I don't have a good excuse but I'm about to waste your time with a bad one anyhow :)

I spent my last weekend fighting the flue bug that involved a fever fluctuating from 102-104 degrees and all the screwy dreams and hallucinations that go with. In fact, last weekend felt like a real life portrayal of the movie Fear and Loathing in Las-Vegas, and its taken most of this past week to put the pieces back together.

Rather funny what you do when you when you're in a situation like that. Like a lot of guys I'm rather pitiful when I'm sick with a cold. My nose is usually smeared ointment and red as a fire engine, and I'm usually found lounging on the couch or bed surrounded by several metric tons of tissues. I never realized how many tissues I actually use til I went to clean-up things this past Sunday and it took two 12gallon bags to remove them all !!

Somewhere in the midst of the fever induced bouts of hallucinations and unconsciousness I called my mother. She lives three hours away so its not like she can really do anything, but even at the age of 30 when a boy is sick, he instinctively feels a need for his mommy !!! According to the thermometer I'd been running a fever of over 103 degrees for nearly 11 hours and wanted to get a second opinion before going to the hospital and unleashing the crap storm that would go with that decision. I've had a couple of friends make that mistake this year already and found themselves quarantined, very much against their will, for several days. Who can afford to miss that much work ? So I guess in hindsight, getting a second opinion was rather prudent given that I wasn't in a position to fully make a sound decision. To Mom's credit, she did help me out quite a bit, and her maternal instincts have not weakened a bit. She was very concerned.

The conversation was somewhat funny. Her first question “What is your temp at right this moment ?” UUHHH I hadn't thought to look at that, so I check, which was quick being that I was using one of those IR deals that you hold to your ear and click the button on. 102 degrees. So mom says okay well its close, check it using the other ear now, Okay that's a reasonable request. So I do, 104.5 degrees this time. To which Mom says “has it been giving you readouts that vary this much the whole time ?” I have to think about it for a couple minutes. Finally I figure out how to check the thing's memory and sure enough it has. “Mike you've got a bad thermometer, I know there is a pharmacy around the corner from you, go ask the pharmacist to help you pick out a reliable one but DO NOT tell them you are worried about H1N1, don't even hint that its crossed your mind !! Bring it back, check your temp with it twice in a row, write down the results, and call me back with them”. UUHH ? “Okay clearly the cold medicine is working on you, your gauge not working, go get another one and recheck and please don't worry me by taking two hours to call back”. OH Okay, you make good sense Mom ! Wonder why I didn't think about that earlier “Because you favor your Father's side of the family more than mine, tic, toc, go get this done before you fall asleep again sunshine and get some 7-UP and chicken soup while you're there ”. I'm glad I talked to her, because upon returning with a better thermometer, I was much relieved to learn my temp was actually closer to 100-101 and this device's readouts only varied by two tenths of a degree. But I had to check it about eight times to convince myself of this as well has have dear mommy assure me that was a good thing and I could put my fears of having to go to the hospital to bed.

Always seems like with the flue I fall asleep watching some screwed-up show that creates images in my head when I float in and out of sleep throughout the day. I think this last time it was the worst of the worst though. Some documentary about Oswald and the spooky characters he associated with. Freaking thing caused me to have nightmares all week. At one point, a leg cramp woke me up from a dead sleep and in the confusion of one of these whacked-out dreams I was rousted from, I spun around thinking David Ferrie was coming for me ! Don't Google that guy, it'll REALLY creep you out by the way.

Thankfully, I'm pretty well healed-up now, just recouping my strength from the ordeal, and I hope to have more posts on here soon.

Again, I'm sorry I haven't been keeping up with this lately, but stay tuned, there will be more and much more worthwhile posts coming soon.

Until next time, this is the RedHeaded Rambler, signing off