You Be Illin’… but don’t worry, we’ll fix that with a Q-tip

You know that feeling where you know you’re getting sick, but you just haven’t penciled in time on the calendar for it?  I had that one last week.  And it kept dragging on.  On Tues the sore throat and subsequent fever drove me to come home from work and pitch a tent of sorts on the couch.  My kids are always extremely helpful in this situation.  At one point my forehead (which is roughly the size of Mongolia) was being gently dabbed by my 4 year old with wet, balled-up toilet paper.  Yep, that’s sure to do the trick.  Strangely, this and 397 Ibuprophen tablets didn’t quite kill the fever.  The whole night I was sick.  I called the “nurseline” and described my condition in my the same way you describe tech support problems to the dude on the phone.  The “nurseline” told me to just keep drinking “fluids.”  I hate when they say fluids.  I wish they’d just say water and stuff.  Now there’s a pretty predictable thing that happens when you drink lots of fluids AND you have a high fever – You’re pretty much hitting the bathroom with roughly the same frequency as you are taking breaths.  This, among other things, makes sleep hard.  Here I feel the need to make a point:

Being sick was WAY better when I was a kid.

Not entirely sure why, but I actually have fond memories of it then…  Anyway, I endured the night by watching almost two full seasons of The Big Bang Theory and by intermittently moaning to nobody in particular.  I was a little better the next day, but pretty much felt terrible the rest of the week.  However, there was too much to do and we had awesome visitors, so I just faked like I felt fine.  I don’t really recommend this.  Finally on Saturday I went to a doctor and they shoved two elongated q-tips into my throat and seemingly scraped off the first several layers of tissue.  (while looking for pictures of Q-tips I found out there’s a hip hop star with that name – really?!  That’s the best you can do?  Why not go with “Cotton Swab” or something.)  And with this test they decided I had strep, which is short for “Strepthisstupidthroathurts-A-Lot".  Anyway, I’m good now, but who know what kind of death bed I’d be on if it wasn’t for those dripping wet toilet paper balls?