I am sitting on my sofa in my PJ’s covered by a thick blanket feeling both hot and cold and dripping from various places. My ears are ringing, my body is aching. It is also simultaneously stiff and floppy in all the wrong ways, in all the wrong places. The plethora of pills I’ve taken cause me to rattle when I walk, and I’m sweating VapoRub from every pore.

Current mood: Hunt down the MoFo who gave me this cold and beat them with my bottle of Benylin. I am willing to bet pounds to pennies that they are probably. Absolutely. Fine.
   Just going about their daily business as a vendor of viruses.
Not suffering in the slightest.
I can’t accept that.
(And yes, that is a mood! It goes, ‘happy’, ‘sad’, ‘hunt down the MoFo’, ‘angry’ etc…).

It’s not that I can’t handle being ill, I have a disorder that means my body does whatever the hell it likes at the best of times, so I’m used to pain, and can deal with pain very well. But, coughing – and especially sneezing – for a few days I just can’t handle. Having a blocked nose I find particularly tortuous – especially when it’s just one nostril…and I don’t know why. I know it’s just a cold and compared to other illnesses it’s nothing, and I can even be up and about when I’m suffering from much, much worse, but I turn into something of baby the second I get that first sniffle. I would rather have a week of migraines. I think in some way it’s because it’s different when you’re a child with a cold. You catch a cold, and your Responsible Adult will take care of you. You get soup, and no one minds hugging you even though you’re drippy and unquestionably infectious, and there’s soup (I know I said it twice but it’s worth repeating), and you get ‘get well soon’ phone calls from aunties and uncles, and sympathy.

And then you grow up. When you are the Responsible Adult, and you are the adult you are responsible for…there may not be soup (or there may well be soup but it came from a tin that’s been in the pantry since before the house was built, and you know you should probably throw it out but it’s oddly comforting knowing that it’s there, and also you’re a little bit scared to move it because reasons), and no one wants to hug you even though you’re probably no longer infectious and the only phone call you got was a pocket dial which you had to sit your sick floppy-stiff body up for. Ugh. I miss being a kid. It was a simpler time.

It was also a time before unlimited internet access and Doctor Google. Because I’m a tiny bit of a hypochondriac, and mostly because I like to torture myself and increase my health anxiety unnecessarily, I type my symptoms into google in the hopes of finding some comfort, even though I know (don’t we all know?!), that when it comes to minor illnesses and injuries Google has no chill. So of course, I type my innocent (but evil feeling) symptoms into the search bar and the internet convinces me that I’m dying of the plague, which of course immediately raises my stress levels making me even more tense and sick, so I type that into the search bar and the vicious cycle continues, and it is addictive, and I can’t stop!

Being sick sucks.

PS To any bacteria, virus or parasites reading, I implore you to please be more considerate to your human hosts. I’m sure we can come up with an amicable arrangement which doesn’t involve the host becoming ill the day they have an important interview or the first day of their holiday. Thanks.