Friday, March 28, 2008

Phil Laid Low

I start off a lot of posts by saying that I am not dead. But this time, I think I may have actually temporarily died.
On the last day of the second to last trip I went on, I drank some tomato juice on the plane, thinking I could do that without a reprisal from nature. Nature responded; about two in the AM, I woke up in a state I shall not describe... I had been botulized. Spent the next two days in a tomato-hued delirium. On the third day, I felt good enough to attempt to go back to work. Again, nature responded. What you have to know here is that, just a few months ago, I had my first flu shot ever. You'll remember me saying earlier in the blog that I haven't been sick once since I've been attending flight, even though the planes are teeming hives of disease. I am not sure what made me think I needed a flu shot, because I wasn't broken, and you all know what not to do when it's not broken. So, whether it was that I had legitimately become invulnerable to sickness and then went and screwed it up with a flu shot, or that I had given the raspberry to Fate by being healthy for almost two years and she responded, I got sick.
Oh I got sick. For three damn weeks I got sick. When they talk about the superflu, they're not talking about a virus in tights and a cape, they're talking about this mother. I went through every possible phase of sickness except for the throwing up phase, and I think that's because I'd already been tomatoed earlier in the month. First few days were the dizzy-fever-sweat nap days. After that it was the muscle ache-sore throat section of the film (it was during this section that I made a psyche-shattering discovery that needs its own entry [which follows this one]). Then it was the coughing-losing the voice part. I did it all. And for how long? I don't remember the flu lasting this long when I got it when I was a kid. It was kinda fun back then. Stay home from school, parents are suddenly nice, and all the Sprite you can drink, in trade for a few days of feeling like funk.
This thing that just hit me was totally different. I'm just now rid of it. What was cool was seeing all my friends rally to help me back onto my feet. I usually have this subconscious feeling that I'm alone in Utah because I don't ever have time here to go out and make friends. But Katy was there with groceries, May Rose was there with daily 'are you still alive' phone calls... I actually had people from several different states calling for progress reports. And no, you guys out there in internet land didn't know I was dying, but you did notice I was gone, and it was nice to see messages like "We're going to kill you if you don't update soon, you spank!" That's the real-world equivalent of snapping your fingers. Thanks for keeping me alive.

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

crap! So that's what was going on! you poor baby....I was worried, I admit, and you don't even KNOW me.

6:20 PM  
Blogger Phil said...

Sure I know you... you're A. Nonymous. You're the one that's been coming up with all those pithy sayings since time immemorial.
Nice job, by the way. I especially like that one about "You can pick your friends..."

7:37 PM  

Post a Comment

<< Home