Monkeyblah.com is run by Peter 'X-G' C O Johansson as a fun project and a weblog, as a way of expression, distribution of creative works, and as a design experiment, and was first established in spring 2004 as a successor to his earlier weblog, Not Quite Elite.
Status ailment
Wednesday, October 6 2004 at 13:49
Rant
I've managed to come down with some particularly nasty cold. Went from kinda okay with a sore throat in the morning to full-blown fever and jitters about 9 yesterday evening. And it's agony. I'm sure most of you people have had colds or influenza as well, but I'm going to describe the very worst part of it, in my opinion.
It's not the sore throat. That kan be fixed by drinking some tea and relaxing. It's not the sweats or chills ? as annoying as they are, they are little more than that. No, what sucks is the high fever, and in particular, trying to sleep with a fever.
Imagine this: I go to sleep at nine, feeling more than a bit under the weather. I have the usual chills and sweats, but I'm doing relatively okay. I finally fall asleep, only to wake up again later. That's when the nightmares begin. In particular, fever hallucinations. For a long time, I can't say exactly how long, I was convinced that the world somehow consisted of two factories ? one with straight geometric shapes associated with it, and one with swishy circular things ? producing items that I was responsible for.
This is going to sound insane, and it is; that's what sucks about a fever. Despite being convinced of all this, and constantly failing at whatever I needed to do, I knew that it was all hallucinations and that it was so wrong. But I couldn't help myself. I could just lie there, sweating and hallucinating and not being able to do a damn thing about it. I couldn't even drag myself out of bed.
I did finally manage to sit up and slowly move to the bathroom, where I gulped down a healthy portion of water and discovered, much to my dismay, that I was out of ibuprofen. As bad as that was, I decided I could hopefully ride out the fever anyway. I couldn't.
This happened at roughly 23:40. During the next hours, whenever I was lying in bed, I was hallucinating, and whenever I sat up, I got extremely tired. No matter what I did, as soon as I laid down, the hallucinations returned. It was genuine hell and there was nothing I could do about it. I don't think I slept for more than an hour at a time, waking up constantly and drinking more water. Then finally daylight dawned and I decided to write about it.
Now I have to figure out what to do with my day. I'm still cold and sweating, and my throat still hurts. I feel I don't have much energy to do anything. I'm also hungry, but I don't feel like eating anything in this condition and I'm all out of any breakfast-type foods anyway. Any suggestions are welcome.
That didn't sound very good. Hope you'll manage to get well soon.
About the tip part I'd stay in bed with a glass of water not to far away.
Ice-cream helps with the sore throat. It goes against all logic that our moms have instilled into us, but it does help.
Might also take down the fever a bit.
You could call someone and ask them to bring you stuff from the store, if you need.
Anyway, if you're hallucinating, it might be best to call the ambulance or at least consult with a doctor.
The factories stuff reminded me of Lem's "Eden".
And speaking of weird dreams, I finished Cavelos' "The Shadow Within" last night and dreamt about reading some other book. I remember it being very funny and I even recall some of the jokes -- stuff I haven't heard or read before, even.
You haven't touched the goofballs, have you?
I know what you're talking about, I used to have fever hallucinations as well when I was younger, for instance I thought the bed and the blankets and the pillows were all rock hard, and I would hurt myself on them if I moved even the slightest bit.
Fever hallucinations tend to happen to me whenever I have a bad enough fever, and it seems that threshold is kinda low, so I tend to get them even if the fever isn't life-threateningly bad or anything.
Oh, and my mum actually taught me that ice-cream is good for your throat. :)
The hallucinations have gone down now anyway. They only happen when I try to sleep, and they're not so bad now.
Still going to be out of commission for a while though.
Welp. If you're going to be "out" for a few days, grab some Babylon 5 eps off suprnova and watch those :P
Get well soon, X-G. Oh, and start keeping track of how many posts you have left. :)
Oh yeah, updates for the rest of you:
Fever's gone, cold's turned into something bronchitis-like. Am getting over it, slowly.