Injury Report: Flu-Like Symptoms

I know I said I was going to kick the writing into high gear, but I got stopped in my tracks by a bout with flu-like symptoms this week. On Sunday, I woke up at 10 and by 1pm my muscles were aching and I was ready for a nap. A 4-hour nap to be exact. I knew I was coming down with something so I drank all the water my stomach could hold and I started popping some extra vitamin C and E, along with some black elderberry syrup, which is supposed to ward off sickness. I probably shouldn’t have woken up at 330 in the morning to watch the Oscars, but I wasn’t going to let a little nascent cold get in the way with an annual tradition. I went to school on Monday on 4 hours sleep (plus the hyper-nap) and I felt terrible by noon. I got some Thera-Flu and throat lozenges from the school doctor to makethe day passable. I passed out for the full hour-ride home on the bus and when I got into my apartment I fell asleep for another 4 hours. I stayed home from school on Tuesday- aside from a bad head cold, my body felt like it had just run a marathon. My back, my legs, and my hips suddenly felt downright arthritic and there was no way I could deal with those evil 5th graders with this little in the tank.

On my day off I slept until 11am, took another power nap from 2-5:30, and then I packed it in for the night around 11:30. Clearly, the best way to spend your time when you’re feeling sick and miserable is to sleep it off. In the few hours I was awake and coherent, I watched some of Ralph’s Seinfeld DVDs. The first season was only 4 episodes and a pilot! Ralph lent me the first 3 seasons, so I’ll be watching those over the next month or so in my downtime.

I’m back at school today, but I’ve been like a zombie most of the time due to the powerful effects od a Sudafed cold pill I took this morning. For a majority of the day I felt like I was floating and I could hardly feel my legs. Walking down the halls, I had some trouble keeping my balance and walking a straight line. Luckily, I didn’t have to teach any classes until the last 2 periods. But then my last class, English Drama, was cancelled because all of the kids are in the school science fair and they were in a mad rush to finish their projects. Great! I only have 9 more rehearsals to put on a full-fledged musical, and one of them just got cancelled so the kids could work in the 11th hour on the science fair. I wasn’t up to teaching today anyway. All English classes have been cancelled tomorrow due to the aforementioned fair, but I still have to spend 5 hours babysitting kids. Ah well, it could be worse.