raven | Swine flu

Urgh. I am dreading the 9am start tomorrow more than, well, just about anything. One might say, then, go to bed, but being the sort of person who doesn't sleep at night means, hey, you get wound up about not sleeping at night, and then you don't sleep at night. Sigh.

It does, however, beat swine flu, which is nowhere near as fun as advertised. I am about ten days post-diagnosis now, and feeling every day like some large wheeled vehicle hit me the night before. (It gets smaller. It was a truck. Now it's an articulated pram.) And, really, it was no fun at all. I cannot emphasise this enough, but I am blessed with an immune system that is usually pretty sound, and my notion of "ill" is "a bit off, and you can still watch TV". I started revising this opinion on Friday night, when all I could do was shiver, and then a little further on Saturday when all I could do was shiver and wail about the opening chasms in my head, and then, on Saturday night, round about where the "mild case of symptoms" I was supposed to be having, being an able-bodied adult, was supposed to be kicking in, I woke up in the midst of vague dreams about sushi on picnics with my entire extended family, and thought: aha, I need to go somewhere.

And woke up again, some minutes later, because Shim was picking me up off the floor, and noticed from very far away that his pupils were so dilated that his eyes had turned black as pitch in his face, and then thought: isn't it funny, that's the last thing I'm going to think before I die, and then I probably passed out again. Apparently, This Is Your Brain On Swine 'Flu has a turn towards the melodrama. Shim looked after me beautifully throughout,, but probably never so much as just then, and regardless of anything I never wish to faint on a hard wood floor again. After that things were never so bad, but I think I'd like to register a general complaint: I should have, at that point, started on anti-virals, given that at that point a) they were still effective and b) Shim and I don't live together. Technically, I live alone, and my own bathroom floor is harder than wooden. But as I was slightly conditioned to think, hi, I am an able-bodied adult, I sort of assumed that my case of flu was, indeed, mild.

...okay, now I realise it wasn't. After that I had all the symptoms of the flu, but consecutively, so I had dizzy-and-fainting and then splitting-headaches and then muscle aches and then, bizarrely, a sore throat and blocked nose. (Which were the worst; nothing like being told by all, including the out-of-hours GP, who has been persuaded to call and help only after much shouting down the phone by people who are not you, that you'll "pick up in a day or two, drink fluids" when you can't drink fluids, you can barely get anything past the back of your tongue. Urgh. Urgh, I say.)

Now, I am lots better, but am told by said GP that the general feeling of ennui will not pass very easily; that I should expect to feel tired and ill, especially in the evenings, for weeks yet. Which is not a thought that fills me with hope and good qualities, but it can't be helped. And much as I do complain about the NHS in my particular case, I would like to point out, for the record, in reference to some recent debates about US healthcare in particular: I was ill. I was too ill to function. The NHS helpline told me to stay in bed, drink fluids, and rest, and send someone out for antivirals. They told me not to panic, and that there would be plenty for everyone. (In their FAQs, they did not include "will I have to pay for them?", this presumably not having been asked frequently enough.) When I went to see my GP, he asked if I had an employer whom he could write to to explain why I would be off my work for a while. When I said no, he said not to be tempted to jump straight back into studying; rest, rest, and rest some more.

In short: I caught the flu. My government told me to rest, drink fluids, and take the drugs they gave me, and feel better before I went back to work. Why, those evil pinko commie bastards.

I have very little else to report. I read Unseen Academicals while I was ill, and while I liked it, I didn't like it quite as much as I wanted to. Like most of the later Pratchetts, I think it needs a re-read before I quite "get" it, especially as I wasn't exactly compos mentis when reading, but I think, broadly, that it really suffers for lack of structure. Which is a great shame, because it's very funny and very touching; I love the "understairs" Unseen University characters, I love Glenda and Nutt, and I think the details of the denizens of the Night Kitchen's lives are beautifully rendered. And this is very much a funny novel, much funnier than the Watch ones have tended to be (which is not a criticism; I love the Watch books no matter how funny they are), and Pterry was absolutely right, the Librarian is great in goal. But there's nothing quite holding this together - it lacks the aspect of being a police procedural, and it's not like Soul Music or The Truth, which have a Roundworld structure he can borrow so you know how the story is going to go. This, on the other hand, seemed a bit loose. Which is a great shame, because it's full of great stuff, but I am mildly disappointed. Glenda was great, though, and interesting in that she's essentially a witch, with no magic - she has the strength I associate with Pratchett's witch characters, and the same tendency towards managing people.

(Mostly, I am now looking forward to the next Tiffany Aching book, which I think are the best ones he's done that aren't Watch novels. We'll see, I guess.)

The grand Deep Space Nine watch continues; I just finished "Doctor Bashir, I Presume", and as well as getting episode-title-win points, it also was a really interesting character piece; insightful, and really rather sad. (I keep tearing up at DS9. Why, I ask you. But this was another one of those. Also, recently, "Hard Time" did this, and, god help me, the scenes at the end of "Body Parts" where Quark is sitting in the gutted remnants of what was was once his bar, and Dax comes in to give him some glasses her sister sent her, "but they're really ugly", and Bashir can't accept a gift of brandy from his patients, and Sisko has decided that there are a whole bunch of chairs and tables that he wants to put in storage in Quark's bar, and they all file in with stuff and I did tear up slightly.) I do love this show. Also, Alexander Siddig has lovely eyelashes.

Maybe I ought to go to bed. I know I ought to. Sigh.

edited to add: just as I clicked post -

yuletide nominations are OPEN.

son of eta: Okay, guys, I want to nominate Connie Willis' novels for Yuletide again. Thing is, though, To Say Nothing of the Dog and Doomsday Book have been nommed as separate fandoms in the past, and that makes no sense to me. If you were nominating the two of them together, plus the novella, Firewatch (and, presumably, the 2010 novels will be included for the Yuletide after this one), what would you call the universe as a whole? I cannot think what the fandom is actually called.

Current Mood: busy
Current Music: The Pogues; Thousands Are Sailing

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Posted by

stained_glass

*HUGS YOU SO MUCH* My poor dear!

I had exactly the same thought about Glenda, and I loved Nutt so much it made me cry. I love woobies.

Posted by

still crazy after all these years

Swine flu

Page Summary

Active Entries

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags