Sick and Tired

I caught a bug this week. Not in the literal sense, although there seem to be millions of bugs available for catching out here in the wilderness.

Sometime Monday my throat began to feel like I had been gargling sandpaper. Then the sweats began, followed in close order by chills, stuffy nose and a cough that makes my whole body shudder. No, it's not the swine flu, but it certainly makes me feel like a porker.

I know how this happened. In between moving out of Champaign and into Decatur, I was also trying to find time to write six stories last week on deadline. I was working late hours, deep into the night, and not taking very good care of myself. Now, voluntarily quarantining myself in bed Tuesday and today and feeling like warmed over doo-doo, I'm paying the price.

I certainly don't want to infect the in-laws, school-going girls and tiny new puppy who live here with me. (Karen's out of town on business this week, so she's immune from my plague.) Ironically, I was afraid that the girls might bring home some deathly virus from their classmates that would find its way to me. Instead, I'm the carrier. And what's worse, with all the medication I'm taking regularly for my kidney distress, there's virtually no over-the-counter cold medicine I can take that won't cause further damage. So I sniff, drip and honk. A lot.

All this is making me think, though, about how much better care I will have to take of myself in the future when (not if, unfortunately) my dialysis regimen begins. Sterility and consistency are such vital parts of the whole Peritoneal Dialysis routine – hooking myself up to a machine every night through a catheter implanted in my body, one of the few downsides of the procedure is the threat of infection at the connection site.

As my lifestyle changes to accommodate my health care needs, I'm going to have to become much more organized and regimented in terms of when and how long I work. And if you know me, that'll be like asking me to become shorter so I won't have to worry about big and tall sizes. I've always contended, "You can't control the muse! You have to write when the inspiration hits you!"

Well, my muse had better buy a watch.