Category: Personal

You know those days when you just have to eat an entire 400g bar of Toblerone chocolate triangles? I’ve been having a lot of those lately.

Fortunately for my waistline, I haven’t been giving in to the temptation. Today was an exception, though. After several weeks of searching, this morning I accepted a nice job offer, and gave notice of resignation to my current employer. If that’s not worthy of some chocolate gluttony, I don’t know what is.

When Alex was younger, we used to use the “arm test” to tell whether he was really asleep, or still just on his way to dreamland. While he was lying on the sofa, or in our laps, we would lift up one of his arms, and then let go. If he was no longer conscious enough to pull his arm away, so that it would just flop limply to his side, we’d say that he had “failed the arm test.” That was generally the point where we considered it was safe enough to move him up to bed without disturbing his sleep.

I’ve been failing the arm test a lot myself lately. While awake.

Even now, two weeks after I first became ill, small amounts of effort still exhaust me. I took Alex into town for a few hours yesterday late afternoon. We did a little bit of walking around, but mostly we sat around on the High Street and watched the street performers. (Festval time–the city is abuzz.) I then came back and slept for twelve hours.

Today, the three of us went into town just before mid-day. We walked around for a little bit, then took a bus back by three o’clock. I collapsed into bed and had to sleep for an hour. When I woke up I felt thick in the head, dizzy, and nauseous.

The humorous cliché to use would be that I’m getting sick and tired of being sick and tired. But that doesn’t actually feel terribly funny right now.

I hate feeling like this. I want to be better.

It started a week and a half ago with a sore throat. As is normal for me, this became an earache, and then the whole thing dropped down into my chest for a congestion party. Weakness, exhaustion, dizziness. Last Wednesday the doc diagnosed a “non-specific viral infection” (how often have I heard that recently), possibly brought on, and certainly exacerbated by, stress.

Work has been very understanding. In addition to the sick leave I took while I was, well, sick, I’ve also taken a week off to try and get my head back together.

On Friday we rented a car and drove down to Northumberland. We found a wonderful little hotel, the Crown Inn in Humshaugh, a few miles out of Hexham. Unfortunately, I woke up on Saturday morning with a rotten headache. I thought it would go away with some breakfast and tea, but it didn’t happen.

We spent the rest of the day in and around Hexham. Abi assures me that we had a good time, but it’s all a bit of a blur for me. The headache just kept getting worse and worse. Every time I moved my eyes, turned my head, or shifted my posture, I’d be struck down by a vicious pounding right behind my eyes.

Saturday night was awful. Double-doses of paracetamol and ccodeine weren’t helping. Thinking that I might have been dehydrated, I was drinking vast amounts of water. And if I wasn’t just lying on the bed, in the sweltering heat, trying not to toss and turn for fear of the hammering pain, I was getting up every hour to pee. Which, of course, started off the cascade of rippling violence throughout my brain.

By morning I was exhausted, soaking with sweat, still in agony from my head, but now also from my overworked kidneys, and incredibly bored. (I hate it when I’m so ill that I can’t even read.)

Oh, and then I had to drive us back to Edinburgh. Gah.

We made it back and I collapsed. I managed to sleep for a while, but if anything, my head was getting worse. Abi called the emergency doctor service. They reckoned that I was too ill to come to the medical centre, so the on-call doctor came out to see me. She diagnosed an opportunistic bacterial infection in my sinuses. (I hate bacteria. They come in and kick you when you’re down.) So now I’m on antibiotics and some new painkillers, and I’m glad to say that I’m feeling a lot better.

Last night, after the first of the antibiotics had kicked in, and the pressure behind my eyes had relented a little, I almost thought I was fully recovered. But that was probably just because the pain before had been so bad, and any respite felt like nirvana. Now, I’m just back to feeling weak and exhausted again. My head still hurts, just less. I’m still coughing, and still feeling congested, but the phlegm isn’t luminous green any more.

Oh yeah, and I’ve got a gum infection behind one of my wisdom teeth, and bizarre, continuously spreading insect bites all over my body. Sigh.