Well, it happened. After months and months of making tasteless jokes about the swine flu, also known as H1N1, since we need to be politically correct for pigs now, it got me. Call it karma, revenge, or a weak immune system, but somehow, I got it, it got me, whatever, it just happened and I hate it.
But the good news is, I'm alive to write about it. The bad news is, I think I may no longer have friends.
It all began on Monday, when I was giving a series of workshops to high schoolers. In the midst of explaining what it means to be gay to attentive, interested youngsters, I felt my back getting weaker and more sore with each passing hour. For me, this has always been the first sign of illness. I just never thought it was the swine flu. By the end of the fourth and final workshop, I was worse for wear. I headed over to Target before returning to work to pick up orange juice, Airborne, Dayquil, and chicken soup. I had a flight back to North Carolina on Tuesday, and there was not a snowflake's chance in hell I was going to let this inkling of sickness ruin my Thanksgiving break.
Yeah, right. My health basically spiraled out of control and I woke up Tuesday morning feeling super lousy. I had to call in sick to work for the first time ever, and I realized something. After having called in "sick" to various employers and classes before my move into professional gay world, I felt really bad. It's so strange. Back when I was a lazy, piece of shit stoner (not a really long stretch, to be honest), I never thought twice about calling in sick, or whether or not they'd think it was valid. Perhaps that's because I was too busy scarfing down fruit tarts to even consider it. Now that I'm truthfully sick as a dog, I get all nervous that they won't buy that I'm really sick. I guess that's just my guilty conscience playing catch-up. Ketchup.
I head over to the airport, and somehow, someway, I start feeling like brand new. I don't know if it was listening to the new Gaga album that was magically healing me, or the excitement of having my mom and dad take care of/annoy the shit out of me, or what - I was feeling good. I even caught an earlier flight! I was riding on some luck. That is, until I got on the plane.
It didn't help that everywhere in LaGuardia Airport there were signs warning you about what a douchebag you are to be flying if you're sick. Seriously, I could have sworn I saw one that said "If you get on a plane while sick, you're killing everyone, you asshole. You have snot dripping from your nose, could you please get a Kleenex? And don't get on that plane." I got on the plane.
It was the most uncomfortable two hours of my life. Seriously, even worse than the time I had to sit through a Brooks & Dunn concert. Once I landed, I got in the car with my dad. On the way home, he made sure to lecture me about how bad the flu is for people with asthma, and that he couldn't believe I didn't have an inhaler, and then, sensing my complete ambivalence, said "Am I talking to you like you're a [geeky, nerdy, asthmatic] little kid?"
"If you have to ask that, what do you think the answer is?" And then he shut up. We got home, and I fell right asleep and slept till the next day, when I woke up with a fever. I demanded that we go to the doctor, because hell if I was going to spend my entire break like this. The doctor confirmed my suspicions, kind of. She said "We basically just tell everyone they have swine flu."
I was like umm, okay, cause that's fair. Now that my social life is officially dead and gone, I want to go back to that doctor and be like "You basically just ruined my social life. Do you have Zoloft to go with that Tamiflu prescription you gave me, Dr. Basically?" Though, I did fit all of the swine flu symptoms. And all of the stories I've read about swine flu say that it's the sickest people have ever felt.
I'm here to tell you - they're right. Holy god, it was horrible. There was a moment where I seriously thought I was going to die. I felt like my spine, which was throbbing in pain, was going to just snap out of my back and run away somewhere and my chest was going to cave in and my head was going to explode. It was like a 100-101 degree fever non-stop for about 24 hours, no matter how much Tylenol you tried to overdose on. And there weren't any fun hallucinations like the time my fever was so bad when I was 12 and I thought my house was a bubble and that if it popped, I'd fly up into space.
So, I made the mistake of announcing it to Facebook and Twitter, thinking that it would let my friends in North Carolina know why I wasn't answering their phone calls or text messages and avoiding them. That backfired in my face, because it turns out that swine flu is the new leprosy.
I was told that once my fever broke, I'm no longer contagious and I can stop washing my hands every 30 seconds and move to every 2 minutes. My internet research confirms my doctor's claim that this is so. So, Thanksgiving morning, I wake up sopping wet, and am instantly returned to my childhood and I thought I had peed the bed. And then, I realize, no - I had broken my fever! Down with the H1N1!
I woke up and went downstairs and did the choreography to "Bad Romance," just to make sure I really was feeling as good as I thought I was. I hit every move, and my good health was confirmed. I was back to normal. Still - I took it easy all day and chilled out just to make extra super sure.
And today, Friday, I feel totally refreshed. I'm back to weird old me. I know I'm back to normal because this morning, after my shower, I stood in front of the mirror and had a conversation with myself in various accents for about 5 minutes. Yep, normal. All of my friends, however, are not so convinced that I'm a good person to be around. I sense a little hesitation when I make my phone calls, and I can hear a distance in their voices that seems to be saying "come near me and I'll kill you."
If my bout with swine flu has taught me anything, it's to not make insensitive jokes about worldwide flu plagues, because worldwide flu plagues will catch you. They will catch you and they will beat you down. Don't talk about how you're going to get rich off of making t-shirts that say "Feelin' swine in 2009!" Don't tell your Jewish friends that you're jealous that they're immune to it. Don't roll your eyes and cynically laugh everytime CNN covers it and scares the shit out of you and adds to the mass hysteria of it all because, well, they're fucking right.
I'm just glad I survived it. And I'm glad that it forced me to spend a full 2 and 1/2 days with my parents this trip, so they can't complain that they didn't see me enough this time around.
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