BEING SICK

You sneeze until the lungs feel like they are going to pop. You freeze with the chills. The knees go weak, each time you attempt to stand. The computer becomes a blur, the tears come pouring, then the people around you start blurring. So you pop the panadol and tell yourself it's going to be alright. After all that magic pill has worked for years, why should it not another time?

Along the way, you forget, that you have been punishing your body, pushing it to the extreme, waking up at all the wrong hours - even if it means getting to work. Not getting that proverbial much-needed rest along the way. Then one day, after all those years of Panadol popping, the wonder in a circle simply doesn't work.

Something along those lines happened to me last week. Yes, I've been prone to the usual rounds of cough, cold, sneezes, but nothing that the off the counter pill couldn't fix.

Not this time round. Showing up at work despite seeing the stars during the day, I was confident of breezing past the day. That was till every bone in my body started complaining. Soon it was way too much and with a much needed spurt of energy, I got my aching self home. From there things deteriorated quick time. A full blown fever, with spectacularly enlarged tonsils only compounded matters.

Each time I attempted to lift my head from my pillow, my brain (or whatever was left of it, seemed to soar). That was till the doctor peered deep into it and diagnosed it as a mother of all flus. I thought two or three days would fix it all.

Never been so wrong. Soon the voice was gone. The kids were pleased. They fought at will for a week. Though when they did take the brief respites they often worried about the mortal question: "Are you dying?" That was sweet, the frankness of their concern.

A week later, the body is back, but the spirit is still weak.

I am up, not quite about.... living in the eternal hope that my sandy throat will live to see better days. Till then I sip my honey and lime before I get back to the books.