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Some people enjoy being sick. I am not one.

I am too impatient for sickness. Time off at home trying to recover frustrates me because in moments of lucidity, I can see all the things that I have not been able to fix, do, complete during a normal week and here I am with an extra day (or so) and am incapable of moving.

This week, I had two days to recover at home and then the weekend. I’m almost better.

This is the first time I’ve been sick by myself in a foreign country. Normally I’ve even made some decent friends on holiday by now but I don’t have anyone here yet that I would feel comfortable asking to come around and to bring me soup.

Also because my place is still in the midst of going through a second round of a clean-up and I don’t like to subject people to this. If I did know someone here that I’d feel comfortable having around when I’m sick, I would still be torn whether or not I’d actually ask them because my place is such a mess.

I know, sometimes I make almost no sense at all. Even when I am well.

It started on Tuesday with a mildly sore throat.

By Wednesday morning, it seemed that I must have eaten at least half of my chinaware and only swallowed on the right side. There was clearly some jagged pieces still there that grated each time I swallowed. It made me sound like Barry White and would have probably been a good time to go to karaoke with my team since at least then, I would have sounded ok.

I made it to work.

Thursday morning, the rest of my china must have been consumed during the night yet it all seemed to be there when I checked. I woke at 6.15am and attempted to speak. No more Barry. I emailed my managers and my team to let them know I was staying at home today and not to bother calling me because I couldn’t talk. Any urgent emails that must be dealt with that day needed to be marked that way otherwise I wasn’t going to be looking at them. Return emails all wishing me well and telling me to drink plenty of warm fluids (if I was in HK, I would have received various herbal remedies too). Note to self, there are too many of my team on emails too early in the morning; must look into the reason for this.

In those 24 hours, I slept 96 hours.

It was a long slow day and night.

Thoughts came, thoughts went. Not much made sense.

I lay on the couch.

For me, there is nothing much more indulgent than spending an entire day in pyjamas and a yellow terry towelling bathrobe. Until I can smell myself. This is an achievement in itself given my nose was running faster than Superman flies. I think I’ve done this perhaps twice. It’s normally tricky to do since I have my dog to take out but right now, I’m thankful she wasn’t with me as she would also have suffered only hers would have been due to lack of decent walks / runs.

It was 5.30pm, I’d had porridge a few hours earlier for breakfast (my meal timings become immaterial when I’m ill and when this happens, it is generally a good indicator of how sick I am. What a meal is called for the time it is had is one of my pedantic tendencies to have correct) so a shower was due.

Forty-two degrees of luxurious heat however the water felt like needles piercing my skin. I didn’t have the energy to reach the nozzle to adjust the pressure so I decided to sit on the floor figuring with further to fall, it should hurt less. I didn’t wash my hair so I wasn’t as clean as I would have liked to have been. I couldn’t lift my arms for that long and the water would hurt my head. After ten minutes, I figured that I should move again.

Mind willing, flesh weak as my vision started to go dark. I sank back to the floor, outside the shower area and put my feet up. I have Girl Guides to thank, having indoctrinated me with various things, one of which “when the face is pale, raise the tail; when the face is red, raise the head”. It has always worked.

My apartment has a few of those emergency buttons and intercoms like hotels do so if it was really bad, I could always push one of those. It’s one of the upsides for a single person to have this kind of thing. Though I’d be a bit worried about them finding me in the nude.

I dried, dressed in tracksuit pants and a jumper and found the couch again. The smoothness of the material was very comforting as I drifted back to sleep.

The whole day, no artificial sound was allowed in my apartment.

Even the songs playing in my head were too loud.

Tomato soup for dinner, clearly I’d skipped lunch, then bed.

Throughout the night, my nose continued to beat Superman’s record and gradually slowed to the pace of Usain Bolt. Then there was the slight cough.

Friday morning and Barry’s voice was back though I had the energy of a toenail clipping and was coughing like I was a three pack a day smoker for the past twenty years. I decided it was not a good idea to be sharing this with my work colleagues and again emailed the same people as Thursday and received similar words of encouragement. This time I said I would work from home for part of the day. I participated in three conference calls in the afternoon and did some work in between and definitely didn’t manage a full day’s worth. I did avoid having to wear a face mask into the office and trying to stand upright on the train on my way in.

I slept roughly 15 hours.

Saturday was a fairly slow day still though I was clearly a lot better than the previous two. It peaked with spaghetti bolognaise for dinner.

Today, I’m about 96%, a nose that runs at about my usual pace and a throat that feels normal again. China is back in the cupboard and all accounted for.

I’ve had a very peaceful unproductive few days. It’s been great. Aside from the sickness part. That part is lousy.

I’ve even managed to leave my apartment.

* Thanks to Mickey Kojak featuring Tazzy for the rather self-indulgent title to this post. 

On another note…
I had planned to write on the fifth anniversary of the massive earthquake / tsunami in Japan as there have been memorials all over the place for this. Unfortunately I have been unable to participate so I’d only be telling you things I read myself rather than experienced. Please spare a thought for those still rebuilding and families that lost their loved ones as well as the anti-nuclear protesters. There’s a lot of vested interest groups involved and I don’t yet know much about all of this aside from what I’ve seen online. Once I’ve been here for a while, I’ll start to ask people a bit more about what actually happened and how it is seen by the Japanese people themselves. I’ve already been hearing stories about how some walked home from work that day.