It’s been
days with nary a peep from me. That’s
because yours truly has just had a showdown with the Grim Reaper and has lived
to tell the tale.
Earlier
this week, on Monday, I was feeling sickly as hell. I was sniffling and snorting and coughing and
sneezing and wheezing and generally feeling run-down (and maybe even run
over). I was at work and decided, about
threeish in the afternoon, to walk over the campus clinic and let one of the
docs look me over.
A white-clad
nurse ushered me into the examination room where an Egyptian physician, a
forty-something female with a raspy voice (smoker?), greeted me and then asked
what was wrong. I went through my whole
list of symptoms, throwing in my history with allergies for good measure (see
the neti pot post below). She was
obviously paying close attention because she commented on the red coloration of
my nose even though I hadn’t specifically talked about the outward appearance
of any part of my face. She made her
diagnosis after I stopped talking. I had
an upper respiratory “situation.” Quite probably
there was an infection involved. It was
this latter fact which required that she take decisive action. She wrote out a long list of things I needed
to pick up at the pharmacy, and I left.
I went
home, stuck a thermometer into my mouth, and discovered that my body was
churning out heat. I had fever—102
degrees (Fahrenheit) worth. The redness
of my nose suddenly made a lot more sense.
That night
I was feverish and delirious. I tossed
and turned and spoke in tongues and saw visions. On at least one occasion, I am certain that
the devil himself spoke to me, asking me whether or not I found hell a place to
my liking. From time to time, I would
regain consciousness and find my wife’s worried face looking down on me from
what seemed to be a great height. The
next day was more of the same. I ended
up having to miss a couple of days of work at the university.
Over the
years, I’ve had a number of similar experiences that have taught me at least
one very important lesson: My
American-made body is no match for some of these Middle Eastern germs.
Today, five
days later, I’m finally feeling like I might survive. This morning, while walking through my house,
I caught a glimpse of myself in the full-length mirror. My first impression was that I looked oddly
translucent and vulnerable—almost like the larva of some strange insect. Upon further reflection, I could see that it
was the same old Troy looking back at me, only this version was a mite more
bedraggled than usual.
