It started around the fourth or fifth of the month. I woke up around four in the morning with a piercing earache in my left ear. It hurt so much that my sitting up and moving around woke Ian up, which is generally hard to do. The earache coincided with the beginning of a big thunderstorm, so I figured the storm was just messing with my system since crazy weather does that to me. The earache seemed to go away, and I was not sad to see it go. The following Thursday, however, my throat started acting up. It didn’t hurt so much as just make me sound really funny. Have you ever had anyone pound on your back when you’re trying to talk? It sounded like that when I spoke. The following day, my voice went in and out, ranging from barely audible to throaty and scratchy. Still, it didn’t hurt, so I didn’t pay it much mind other than to try and make sure I was wrapped up in my scarf and drinking plenty of liquids. The following Saturday saw little change in the quality of my voice, something which bugged me a little, but wasn’t of massive concern because it still simply didn’t hurt.

Cue Sunday. For most of the day, I was still having voice troubles, but by the end of the day, my throat was hurting as a result of it, which in turn was giving me a headache. The drainage had begun, I suppose, and what had simply been an inconvenience was now irritating. I went to bed that night with a slightly raised temperature and some general achiness in my throat and ears. That general achiness had tripled by morning and my voice was all but completely gone. I wasn’t in a lot of pain, but instead felt a sort of vague fatigue that kept me from doing much of anything beyond getting up for more to drink and then lying back down.

Tuesday, when we got the snow and ice storm, is when it really started to come to a head. The headaches started in full force, my throat hurt more of the time now, and my ears were hurting far more. Again, fatigue kept me down for the entire day, but luckily I wasn’t coughing or sneezing or having to blow my nose all the time. That started Wednesday and escalated through the rest of the week. It seemed to be an inverse relationship: the more my voice came back, the more I coughed, sneezed, and had to blow my nose. I was, however, more awake and alert for much of the day but this came at the expense that there were more headaches, throat aches, and earaches. I’ve gone through an entire box of Kleenex and am a fairly decent way through a second, not to mention the fact that there’s so much medicine in my veins right now that a pharmaceutical company could probably just market my blood. I’m at a point right now to where I simply can’t sleep. I can’t lie down to sleep because the drainage causes massive coughing fits not quelled by cough medicines or hot tea, and I can’t sit up to sleep because the drainage from my nose keeps me awake constantly needing tissues. I’ve been exhausting myself for the past two days trying to force myself to literally pass out but can’t because I’m a chronic insomniac and getting little sleep is something my body is unfortunately used to.

Most recently, around three this morning, I tried to take another nap. I’ve been reduced to short spurts of sleep whereupon I wake up with a clogged nose, tonsils that are hard enough to be used as marble shooters, and a headache that could form diamonds from coal because I’ve been unconsciously gritting and grinding my teeth so much that the pressure is making an already horrible situation worse. The nap at three never got off the ground because despite having just had some hot tea, despite having just taken medicine, and despite having put Vicks Vaporub all over, I started coughing and couldn’t stop. My coughing fits have now reached the point of “bad enough to cause vomitting” because I just threw up a little while ago because I’m coughing so hard. There are burst blood vessels under my eyes and my scratchy throat is that much scratchier thanks to stomach acids. About the only thing that could make all of this better would be if my chronic heartburn came back, though I doubt that will happen; there’s so much mucus in my throat that I could probably swallow cockleburrs and be fine.

Oh, and to top off this great week of being stuck in bed sick? My period started and I’ve had cramps to contend with in addition to the usual bloating, weariness, and annoyance. Add to that the fact that our entire sewage system was backing up so bad that the flushed toilet water was coming back up in our shower, and you’ve got one annoyed woman over here. Not being able to shower and being careful of flushing for two days is enough to top off anyone’s already miserable week. So if anyone needs me, I’ll be propped up on the couch breathing the steam from a cup of mint tea while trying not to cough so hard I vomit what little I’ve managed to eat.