Illness update

I thought it was on the way out. By yesterday evening I was starting to feel better. The shivering had stopped, the aches and pains abated. I was eating well and drinking lots of fluids. Had a good nights sleep last night without the night sweats which had left the bed-sheets wringing wet for the last three days.

Sorry. Sickness is never cool or pretty. Except in films.

The sickness appears to be taking my body like Tiger Mountain: it came for my throat, my nose, my eyes. It pinched my skin, it ran the shakes through me, my bones ached, I sweated a hard rain for the two hours sleep a night I got.

Most of that is done with. Its just in my head now. Literally rather than figuratively. I woke up choking back a reservoir of snot, flooding my throat like a small Yorkshire town, my nostrils like a tapped Hogshead, pint after pint of the stuff, lemsip yellow, thick as custard, bitter as bile. My left eye is closed over - I feel like I've had a punch to the face, my ears still ringing, the grooves of the phantom knuckles still just about discernible. My brain is fogged, my sinuses gluey, my thoughts lumpen, sporadic and dim.

I'm watching TV with the sound down. I can't deal with human voices. Robert Morley has just shown up and I'm not even raising the volume for Robert Morley. This must be it, surely? Flu's last gasp. The final assault. It has nowhere else to go unless it crawls out of my body and starts following me around, criticising my life choices and general demeanour.

Throughout all of this Susan has been an angel, as always. I am truly blessed. I sit in a ball in my dressing gown, sneezing and coughing and choking on phlegm and she takes it all in her stride. She's not bored and she's not put out - she genuinely wants only that I get better. So I will. I thought it would be today but maybe it will be tomorrow. I don't want to let her down.