i heart seamen.

Dear Humanity,

I would very much like to rejoin you now.

Remember last week, when I said I had emphysema? It was actually the plague. My lungs got worse, and Thursday I woke up with a sharp stabbing in the side of my head, so I knew it was time to visit the doctor.

I think the ear infection is probably gone, but the sickness seems particularly fond of me. It’s all clinging to my leg, yelling, “but I love you, baby!” while I’m trying to shake it off and run far, far away. I’ve slept enough in the past week to make up for all the sleep I’ve been (happily) missing the past couple months. Today is the first day I haven’t been dizzy every time I stand up. I’m nearly deaf and my brains are fuzzy and scrambled, so I feel confusingly detached from people and events. My memory of the week since we’ve returned from Vegas is muddled and surreal, but here are some things I recall playing a part:

• fightingknitting: our group keeps attracting new members, which is strange, considering the first rule of knit club.
• Town Talk: Dodgeball says I was there, but I have no memory of it.
• dinner at the Independent, coffee plus whiskey making things temporarily better, subsequent collapsing on the couch
• Infinite Jest: I was somewhat delirious, and therefore the words will be rattling around my brain forever.
• doctor visit, knitting, sickness, knitting, drugs, knitting, drugs, coughing, sickness
• missing our first broomball game, dammit (but they won!)
• pub quiz, considering dying in the Keegan’s restroom
• apparently we watched the Office?
• a couple very dizzy hours at work, going home to sleep on the couch again
• hockey at Mariucci (we were both miserable, but I’d have to actually be dead to miss a game I had tickets to), wanting to lay on the floor during the first period, but I think the pretzel helped (though it didn’t actually help them win)
• more couch, more coughing, more dizziness
• called into work on Saturday, followed by more sleeping on the couch
• hockeywatching at Lyle’s, the beginnings of denial about the sickness
• Kieran’s, the Yacht Club, Nye’s: learning that cold medicine plus having no appetite at all makes for a terrible combination
• Sunday morning: bed; Sunday afternoon: couch; Sunday evening: Matt’s couch (I managed to eat some pizza! Success!)
• the AFC championship game, in which we witnessed the football-equivalent of too many men on the ice!

Anyway, today I’m at work again, and my current status is 43% normal, and gradually improving. Once I’m able to hear again, I think I’ll feel a lot better. In the meantime, I’m going to sit here and ponder the fact that we’ll be on a giant ship in the Caribbean in two months, and I will be rockin’ shuffleboard and chillaxing in deck chairs like nobody’s business. And I hear there will even be sun.

Let us all raise our glasses of Robitussin and toast to the end of The Sickness. Right now.
Jenni