Having the flu is not fun

It all started on Friday morning, pretty much from the time I woke up. 

I felt like an abhorrently large amount of crap. At first, I thought it was just allergies. (Later research on the allergy scene further enhanced that belief when it was revealed there were "Very High" amounts of elm and juniper in the air. Obviously not what the real case was now, but I'm sure it still didn't help. Curse you, elm and juniper.)

I tried to fight through it by surviving off the generic, weirdly titled medicines they keep in the emergency cabinets at my work place. These pills have odd titles like "Certisinus", or "Absofreakinglutelycoughmedicine"and junk. 

None of that helped. 

Right about noon Saturday was when things really begun to take a turn for the worse. I could tell I was running a slight fever, but as the day progressed it really begun to turn on the afterburners. By 5:00 PM, I was done. Tank emptied. Nothing left. 

Got home and decided to take my temperature. 

102.4

Uh, problem. 

After alerting Mel of the situation, I made an appointment at the local CareNow and got myself looked at. My temperature had actually gone UP since I had first taken it when I got home - 102.6. The doctor informed me that adult human beings should be "severely concerned about their health" when their temperature gets that high. 

Big problem. 

The first red flag came when my ear was examined. Right ear checked out fine, no problem. Left ear, different story. Ear infection. DING! 

Then came the flu test. After a quick ramming of a giant cotton swab up my nasal cavatiy, the verdict was in: The dreaded and feared influenza. 

(Quick sidenote: If CareNow's mission statement is to make you feel as worse as you possibly can BEFORE they begin treatment to make you feel better, they succeeded. Not only was I there around two hours, at one point I began to wonder if I was being detained for questioning in a room where the air temperature was 60, and I was already freezing my hindquarters off since I had a ridiculously high fever. On top of all that, on the television in my examination room: The Hannah Montana Movie. Why?)

CareNow is also apparently very selective in giving their patients the option of feeling better sooner rather than later. I was posed this exact question and immediately took the "sooner" option, which consisted of two shots, one in each hip. Then after a approximately 10 minute waiting period in which my nurse waited to see if I would have any kind of reaction to the drugs (which may or may not have included turning into an ice cube, which didn't happen thank you very much) I was off to the nearest 24 hour pharmacy to load up on an arsenal of flu medicine. 

Flash forward to today and the road to recovery. I feel much better than I did yesterday, and hopefully tomorrow will be another big improvement. I have given Mel permission to evacuate the premises for the time being. I miss when she's not here, but would honestly feel a whole heck of a lot worse if she caught this as a result of staying here. 

I've already devoured one bowl of chicken noodle soup and I'm on my third bottle of Gatorade, who incidentally is the global partner of the National Basketball Association. So be sure to watch all the action of NBA All-Star Saturday Night, live from Los Angeles tonight on TNT. 

(See that little bit of cross promotion that I did there??)

Thanks for the concern and well-wishes from everybody. 

Suck it, flu.