American Influenza
What visions dance
In the eyes of a cat
What wonders it must see
Not awake by day
Or deepest night
Crepuscularity
I started thinking that something might be wrong with me on Wednesday when at some point during the day I started coughing for no good reason. Did all of the city’s diesel exhaust and coal fumes finally destroy my lungs? Have I finally developed an allergy to something and I’m going to die at the hands of those stupid Bradford pears? This too shall pass, I told myself, and I went on with day, washing my hands frequently and coughing into my sleeve like that CDC video taught me. Maybe it’s just another cold.
I was pretty sure something might be wrong with me on Wednesday night when, just before going to bed, I began shivering uncontrollably and, once wrapped up in blankets in my seventy degree apartment, I started to have visions of floating in a tower cocoon in Mexico City. Or something like that, I can’t remember the details very well. I would have written it down, but I was convinced that if I left the safety of my tightly wrapped sheets, even just to thrust out an arm for the notepad on my nightstand, that I would freeze to death and die. I made it through the night and started taking aspirin and cough syrup the next day, and it looked like I was probably going to survive. Sometime during the night I awoke with a pain in my lower back around where I think my kidneys are, and since I watch too much of that House TV show my fever-addled mind entertained the thought that this meant my body was shutting down, but no, it was just my back. My self-made swaddling clothes kept me from moving around very much. My solution was to move to the couch.
On Thursday night I awoke about once an hour and attempted to cough my stomach inside out. I felt like I really wanted to hurl, though what would have been hurled I know not, and again my overheated head fought itself to a standstill with crazy ideas, wanting both to run to Kroger to get some syrup of ipecac to purge whatever evil lay restless within me and also wanting not to move ever again forever. I never did puke, which made it hard for me to believe that this was something serious like the flu, but I didn’t really want to spend another night on intermittent bucket vigil, productive or not. I guess it’s time to figure out how to go to a doctor.
The last time I visited a doctor for non-emergency services was at Georgia Tech when I took advantage of the health center for the occasional case of the sniffles of that one time that I had so much ear was that I couldn’t hear out of my left ear man that was gross. I don’t have a primary care provider, and I don’t really know how to find one. I guess times like these are what those walk-in clinics are for? I never know what to make of them. Who uses them? Do they cost more than a regular doctor visit? Am I going to get worse care? Will they laugh at me for not having a regular doctor? I suppose it’s either that or the emergency room again, so Internet found me a clinic on Roswell Road, and away I went, probably unfit to drive but not in much of a state to care about it.
I don’t know about quality of care, since there wasn’t much care to provide. When I walked in there was only one other person there, some middle school aged looking kid with his mom who, based on his red nose and severe bed head, probably had about the same symptoms as me. I filled out a form, watched Fox News talk for a few minutes about shooting down that spy satellite, and then walked back into the second room to wait. The nurse took my blood pressure and my temperature (102.some, alternate between 4 ibuprofen and 2 acetaminophen every three hours) and then jammed a q-tip up my nose and left. Hurray, it’s the flu. But I guess there are pills for that now? I’m taking Tamiflu, but I don’t know how to tell whether or not it’s actually working. It’s supposed to knock a day or two off the flu, but how long would have taken to run its course on its own? Those pills sure were expensive for something that doesn’t seem to do much. What is doing something is that cough syrup I got. It’s a terrible quaff, something that looks like egg drop soup suspended in corn syrup, but wow, that stuff has a kick. Where would we be today without the opium poppy? Coughing a lot more, probably.