While I was out...

...Christmas came and went! LOL Hope you all had a wonderful holiday. I got some kewl stuff in the mail from several kind residents of LaSalle County, enjoyed catching up on the phone with some of my friends, had a few drinks and a steak dinner. Plus, I had four days off in a row (practically a vacation, I tells ya!), though I didn't get to spend them as I had planned.

I had intended on posting something here either Christmas Eve or Christmas night, but never got around to it in time before the mother of all colds hit me like a ton of bricks. Yeah, I ended up coming down with some mutated strain of bronchitis/bubonic plague on Christmas night and have pretty much felt like shit every day since.

I stayed with some friends in Bayfield that night and later in the evening I could tell I was getting sick. When I got in bed, I couldn't sleep, was freezing my ass off (which is unusual for me) under the covers and could not get warm for hours. Then I finally drifted off around 1:30 a.m. only to wake up two hours later boiling. My throat was all raw and scratchy, and I could feel my inner ear when I swallowed (never a good sign for me), so I knew I was in for it.

I never did get back to sleep the rest of the night; I just tossed and turned and watched some DishTV. It was snowing when I got up around 6 and all I could think about was getting home to my own bed -- 25 miles away. I knew neither my condition nor that of the highways were likely to improve as the day wore on, so I got up and started packing.

When I went outside to load my car Friday morning, the cold air felt so good. In fact, it didn't even seem cold to me at all and the snow was just melting off my car as I was brushing it off the windows. I started thinking that maybe I had such a high fever my body heat was melting the snow, but then my friend told me the temperature had actually risen during the night. LOL

Anyway, I made it home OK (though some alarming dashboard warning lights came on while I was going through Washburn) and I didn't leave the house again until Sunday when I had to go to work. That was not a pleasant experience at all, as by now I had developed this hacking, dry cough and was so exhausted from not being able to get any decent sleep that I could hardly see straight. Unfortunately, there are only three people who know how to do my job: me, my boss (who had just covered the night desk on Thursday and Friday), and Chad, who was out of town visiting family. So I just had to suck it up and get that paper out, which I did!

Somehow I made it through the next two nights as well, even though I felt progressively worse each day. By Monday night, the virus from Hell had migrated up to my sinuses and my nose had transformed into a spigot. Jeepers! I haven't had anything like this in years. It was coming out like Niagara Falls. I went through an entire box of Kleenex during a 12-hour period and was up pretty much all night -- again! Tuesday morning, my nose and the skin surrounding it were bright red and sore as the dickens. I looked like W.C. Fields on a three-day bender. LOL

I dropped some cash at the Medicine Shoppe before work yesterday though and ingested a wide selection of pharmaceuticals (including swigging Tussin right out of the bottle at my desk!) last night to keep the beast at bay. Now I have today off, at least, and I am so thankful! I do feel somewhat better, especially since my cough has greatly improved. My nose and lips are still fairly crusty at the moment, but this too shall pass. ;-)

Take care, everyone!