November 2009

Last week some girl with a mega-flu arrived late to class, spilled her coffee all over her books, couldn’t stop her runny nose, became frantic, and proceeded to cough all over my stuff. Visibly unimpressed, I gave this girl a look that suggested she was the scum of the earth - a look that roughly translated as: “hey you there. Yeah you, with the cough that sounds like you’re a St. Bernard. You need to go the hell home and stop spewing germs on people. You’re the reason November sucks, now leave and take your runny nose with you!”

She looked back at me staring at her, as though she could read my thoughts, and seemed legitimately annoyed. Her eyes seemed to question my reaction, asking “what?!” As though she was completely entitled to hack up mucus over whomever she liked.

Now, before anyone gets too excited and proclaims that I’m some kind of horrible person, I mean, this girl was a legit mess, I’d like to note that when I see people that come to class clearly suffering, I recoil with memories of November 2009. I’ve been there, folks - and it wasn’t pretty.

I’m not sure I can even begin to describe the November 2009 sickness. I don’t quite remember how it all started. All I know for certain is that I woke up, did the whole “get-ready-for-work-because-you-have-to” half hour deal and then realized I was going to die.

I had the works: a heavy mucus-y feeling, a runny nose, a mad fever, sore throat, aches, hallucinations, and worst of all, I felt half deaf - like I was permanently underwater.

Most people admit they are sick then head home so they can be taken care of properly. Instead, I was determined that I’d recover all by myself. This super-sickness wasn’t going to last. My immune system would kick in and I’d continue on as an eager work-a-holic.

Wrong. Each time I woke up it was as though the sickness had amplified ten-fold. Additionally, based on my new sick-diet of toast, Nutella (out of the jar), and French Vanilla instant coffee, I was surely going to die.

Despite my parents begging me to come home so they could take care of me, Sickness- Insanity had begun. I was convinced that all day naps were the key to survival. However, I knew after day five that I needed a doctor’s note to take more days off work, so I made an appointment and bared the bone-shattering cold to get to Health Services. In order to even get to the building, I loaded up on daytime Benylin so I’d at least make it through the blizzard outside.

I’m not sure what I was expecting, but within moments I realized everyone there looked awful. Noses were dripping, eyes were drooping, people were staring absentmindedly and wearing scary medical masks. It was Swine Flu season and all these snot factories definitely had it. I was offered a mask by the door but, considering my recent dosage of Benylin, I was on some sort of super-sickness high, so I declined and boldly took a seat with the other zombies (what the what?!)

After a few minutes I legitimately felt like I was in a horror movie. These kids were a mess. I wasn’t THAT sick. I mean, my nose might have been raw from all the tissues over the past week, I felt like passing out, and my brain felt like it was trying to swell outside of my skull, but these kids, now THEY were a mess.

So, in my highly medicated stupor, I stumbled out through the corridor where a nurse caught me trying to escape.

Nurse: where are you going? I just sent you to sit over there.
High Jpep: Umm, I’mma go now. This place is Grossville. Those people are dying back there!
Nurse (looking very concerned): You’ve got a fever. You really have to stay. It won’t be too much longer.
High Jpep (Hyperventilating in panic): I- I – I can’t. You can’t make me. I’m gonna cry. I need a Popsicle and a cheeseburger. This place smells like the opposite of Subway. I can’t sit there. That kid is gonna bite me.

(Let me assure you – in this moment, I was going to push this nurse over if she wasn’t going to let my high-as-a-kite-self leave).

Nurse (guiding me to a chair on the opposite side of the wall): You don’t have to sit over there. Try sitting here and wear this mask. It’ll be all right.

This new chair, where I didn’t have to physically look at other sick people, calmed me down. I was also very glad to be breathing like Darth Vader into the surprisingly soothing medical mask.

I finally got called into the office where I showed the doctor my sore throat and she assessed all the crazy. She asked when I’d noticed symptoms, how many days I’d been off work, and then, with one fluid motion, she waved her hand in front of me as if casting some sort of doctor spell and declared, “infection”.

High Jpep: You just motioned to all of me and then said infection.

Doctor: Yeah. All of it. Just a really really encompassing infection.

She didn’t go into very many details from there. She didn’t even write a freakin’ prescription. She said to continue doing what I was doing all week and then I had to trudge home in the freezing cold while the Benylin wore off. Cut to me freezing, half-high, and attempting to climb snow drifts that weren’t even directly in my way. I started mumbling that sad, sorry monologue sick people do in their heads when attempting any task: “this is the worst… mumble mumble…poor me…mumble mumble” and started humming the Indiana Jones theme song as a messed up sort of motivation. High-dosage-cough syrup me is interesting.

The moral of November 2009 is that when you’re sick you eventually reach that point where you can’t even remember what it feels like to be normal. You trudge around in your pajamas feeling like you’re head is a blimp while you wait for cold-medication to work and for your next pitiful nap. Heck, when Sickness-Insanity kicks in, you might even attempt to go to class.

But, memories of November 2009 ensure that each time I catch someone sneezing or coughing obnoxiously in class, I get an instant, Matrix-like flashback to me on my death bed. I picture the sickly zombies, the look on the nurse’s face, the piles of Kleenex, the tasteless bowls of soup, the instant French Vanilla I can’t even look at anymore, and I curse cold season with every fiber of my being.

So next time you wake up feeling like you’ve been hit by a bus (contemplating the nutritious qualities of your eleventh dose of Nutella), quarantine your sick-self and don’t be that crazy who emerges in public only to get the death stare. Embrace your inner Vader, breathe some Vic’s Vapor, and remember that sharing is only caring when what you’ve got is candy or unicorns.