Disclaimer: Unless you want to be bored by a recollection of a personal bout with flu, you can stop reading now.
Last week is a blur now.
That is, I remember the highlights. Sunday, April 2nd, as the kids were heading to bed, I hopped in the car and drove a couple of hours up the road to perform a disaster recovery test for one of our customers.
What's that glazed and confused look for? Okay, a DR test, is where we take a customer who has a "critical" computer system - that must be up 24x7 (or very near to it) and pretend that a sprinkler went off above it (or the building burned up, or something).
They perform regular backups which are kept at some remote location, and when the disaster happens, they are recalled to a new computer center, and we recover their systems to that new system, and bring them back up. At any rate, I got to my room about 11:15 or so, and didn't quite fall asleep till maybe 1:30.
Then I woke up at 5:30 and started my day. That evening, I took a nap from 6:30 or so for maybe an hour, got up, had supper, returned to work, got back to my room at about 11:30 again, and was asleep around midnight. Then up at 6:30 and ... so on.
Only Tuesday, we had our 9am call, the customer was satisfied that everything was good to go, and sent us home. Only, you see, there's this project back here I've been working on, and a meeting a 1pm for that project, so I returned to work by 12:45, went to the meeting, and pretty much ended the day on schedule.
Wednesday, I came to work, but I was just beginning to feel the pain. I worked, and got a lot done, but... by Wednesday night, I bedded down with a huge headache. I shook it off, thinking, I'll sleep this off in no time.
A little after 12, I woke up. The headache was beginning to spread.
A little after 2, I woke up. I was burning up, curled into a ball, I stretched out, and the cold blankets made me shudder with chills. But back to sleep I went.
A little after 4, I woke up. Ditto the after 2 comments, except I got up and found some aspirin, and I was beginning to ache from head to toe.
After 6, when the house started stirring, I found some Tylenol, and dozed waiting for it to kick in. I don't think it ever did. I told my daughter, before her and Mom left, go get my phone, I don't think I am going to make it into work.
Next thing I knew, it was 10:45. I got my computer turned on, and promptly dozed back off again. When the new mail chime would sound, sometimes I'd rouse myself a little - and I honestly tried to complete a report that should have been done the day before, but..... somewhere around noon, I forced myself into the kitchen, fixed a sandwich and a glass of milk, kept taking Tylenol.
By 3:30, my son got home, I reminded him he had chores to do, and promptly I was sound asleep. And by 4:30, the phone rang. I cannot remember who, or why, but my son instantly gravitated to my side - "Can I play on the computer?" I reminded him, again, of his chores. "I did them." What about the bathroom in there? "I did it." I looked at him questioningly, and he said, "You were snoring."
So I stumbled into the office, and logged him on the computer, and crashed again.
I think, other than bathroom visits, that was pretty much my day. I hurt all day long, from head to toe. Friday, I took some Advil flu and headed to work, and got my numbers taken care of and sent to whom it needed to be sent, and talked to them on the phone and made sure they understood it.
And generally, plodded throughout the day. Friday night, I was exhausted, and crashed out. At 12:30 my daughter called from her sleepover asking for someone to come and pick her up, so up I got and fetched her.
Saturday - worse than Friday, but not quite as bad as Thursday. I had a cycle going Saturday morning. My wife had gone to work, my kids were downstairs playing games, quietly. And, I slept, in bits and pieces. I'd sleep, hard, for a few minutes, dream a crazy dream (the same one, every time), wake up with a start, sweating all over, stretch out, freezing with the chill of the blankets, roll over, and start again, 3 or 4 times an hour, from the wee hours, until the phone rang at about 10:30.
At that point, I rousted myself out of bed. I stumbled into the other part of the house, called the kids up, and collapsed in the easy chair, for a while. My wife got home in the afternoon, and took my daughter off to a scouting even a short time later, which left my son and I home alone. We started a movie, but I found I couldn't hang with it, so I went back and crawled into bed a little after 3 - telling him not to let me sleep past 5.
He called me at 5, and by 5:30 I got myself up out of bed, and when everyone got home, actually ate a meal for supper, and watched a movie, and by 10, was ready to collapse again. Sunday, I slept till 10, but it was a more restful sleep. I still woke up with a headache, but the body pain at least, was gone. I got up, and we all worked together on a breakfast. Biscuits, and chocolate gravy, and bacon and grits. I didn't eat a lot, but ... at least the appetite was there.
By suppertime, there wasn't much appetite, but I did eat a half cup of soup, then later, off to bed, and starting the week over now. This morning, up and out at normal time - with a big headache again, but none of the rest of the Nasties. The headaches could be from too much sleep - although come to think of it, last night I had a lot of trouble even getting to sleep. I woke up a couple of times, all tangled up in the sheets.
I think, once I did finally drift off, I must have tossed and turned a lot, because I'd wake up, with the sheet pulled up over my shoulder, wrapped around my fist underneath me. It took some degree of awakeness to figure out how to untangle myself from that mess.
But, anyhow, I seem to have survived the flu.
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