Well, it's another new year. This one's starting from the bottom, too...it's the strep throat.
- Day Zero: Monday I felt fine. I do recall having a bit of dry throat and being more tired than usual in the evening, but I didn't see it as a sign of illness. Sinus drainage can cause the dry throat anytime and people sometimes get tired. I thought nothing of it.
- Day One: On Tuesday I woke up feeling horrible. I prepped a day for work as best I could, but before I actually got around to doing anything I diverted myself to an urgent care clinic in Oak Cliff. Their waiting room was full and it took forever to get seen. When I did, I had the rapid test for strep even though I by then I knew that's what I had. Both the nurse and doctor said they're seeing a lot of it. My temperature was 103 which is very, very high for me. The last thing I wanted to do was wait around in a pharmacy to fill my prescription, so on my way home I called a friend to see if he was around and if he'd do it for me. He said yes but he was leaving for work and asked if it was okay if he got it on his way home. Fine with me. However, he picked up an extra shift and didn't get back until very late.
- Day Two: Wednesday. I showed some improvement and began my antibiotic. The day was pretty uneventful. I slept on an off all day, but never for more than, say, 15 or 20 minutes every couple hours. I didn't take my temperature all day if you can believe that, but you know when you're running a high fever. I could tell I was running one but that it wasn't high. I elected not to take anything because keeping a high temperature helps to kill off bacteria. My most bothersome symptom, of course, was my throat. I'm totally addicted to cigarettes. While I didn't smoke as nearly as many as I normally do and never once finished one, it can't help matters to smoke. But it also can't help to go in to fucking DT's either. Anyway, at some point in the evening I decided to watch a TV show that was recorded on my DVR. Nova, to be exact. On Nova they begin the program and it runs for a few minutes before it has the opening with the theme song and list of underwriters. I fell asleep before I even saw that, and woke up literally less than one minute before the DVR recording cut off. The recording was 1:09, so I would guess I slept almost exactly one hour. After that I was not tired for quite some time and went to bed pretty late...around 3am.
- Day Three: Last night I didn't sleep well at all, waking up probably every hour or two. Very weird dreams. I woke up for good maybe 45 minutes ago feeling WORSE than yesterday. Since then it's backed off maybe a little, but it prompted me to see what my fever was. 102.2. Still quite high for me as usually I'm in the 97.5 degree range. What's bothersome to me is that usually on the second day after taking antibiotic I feel better, not the same and certainly not worse. I'm sure it's temporary and all but it still sucks. Funny thing is, my throat still hurts but feels less swollen inside, and it also looks better in there than it did yesterday. Therefore I don't know if I'm getting better in spite of how I feel or if maybe all that's because I haven't eaten anything to irritate it. Who knows.
Anyway, that's where I am with that. A lot of how I feel may have to do with the crazy sleep. In all honesty I do not feel like I've slept at all, and together with a pretty high fever that's going to may you feel really cloudy and shitty.
When I called my old man on Tuesday to let him know I was down for the count, and was bitching about having all those weeks of sinus trouble and then getting over it and then coming down with this. He made the remark that it could be related. So yesterday I did a little internet reading. Not much. Actually just one site. It verified what I thought I remembered knowing, though, which was that the bacteria causing strep throat incubates in your nose. Well, if you have sinus problems maybe that did help the dreaded Streptococcus take hold. Not sure.
Yesterday was so damn weird. I remember talking to my mother at some point, and just having all my language filters turned off. We were talking about Christmas and more specifically about one of my cousins. You can tell this guy is from Texas just by looking at him. I don't mean a cowboy hat and all that bullshit. Very few people dress that way around here and for those guys I think it's more of a bit than anything else. I just mean he's got the big ol' pot belly. The clothes he wears are very Texas looking. Not western shirts...again I'm talking about a different kind of look here that's hard to pin down. He's got a full goatee. The dude just looks like a guy from Texas, I don't know. Anyway he was an interesting subject because he works a very blue collar job, and non-Union at that. Started there right out of high school....never went to college or anything. Recently he had his 25th year with the company and you know what they gave him? A fucking Rolex. Not the cheapest model, either. I thought that was unusual.
What's even more unusual is his family. His wife, who he married when I was little but not that little -- maybe ten or something -- wasn't really all that good looking back then. As the years went by I would have noticed, too, becuase of course I became a teenager. I'm not saying the woman was ugly or anything, and in fact I remember thinking she was built pretty nicely once I got old enough to notice such things. But she was just this sort of average looking, Texas woman. By "Texas woman" I mean she wore too much makeup and that sort of thing. Sort of a not quite rural but not suburban Texas woman look, I guess. Anyway, on with the point. She's in her forties now. I really have no idea how old she is but I would guess just from the 25 year thing that she's somewhere between 43 and 46. What is so strange about this is that I see her once a year, and once a year only. On Christmas. The last three or four Christmases this woman has gotten better and better looking. She has went from being average and all Texasy to being hot, literally. Dresses tastefully.
And, of course, I'm in charge of taking photos since I'm the photographer and all. This year I forgot my memory card but my mom has a little digicam of decent quality and I actually used it in very stealth-like fashion to take a bunch of photos of my cousins wife. Not out of admiration, but to see definitively whether or not she'd had plastic surgery. The conclusion? There's absolutely no evidence of it. In fact, compared to last year's photos and the year's before that, there's definite aging happening. Yet she looks better and better. It's really weird.
They have two daughters. One is only twelve or something so who knows what will happen with her, but the other is 16. I had these Christmas photos going back three years, back to when that girl was 13. This one had developed early, shall we say, and even at thirteen was kind of a looker. Don't think I'm creepy, please. I'm not. But she was. The next year, though, she wasn't as good looking. And this year especially she had taken steps backward. The girl's gained some weight but it's not all that. She's literally going in the opposite direction that her mother is.
So that's some weird kind of family dynamic going on that I dare not try to explain. I can only attempt to describe it.
There's one person who reads this blog who's not goint to like hearing this, but a woman of my cousin's wife's age should be holding steady at best, and that's only if she takes very good care of herself. Which I think she does. But it's an entirely different thing to get better significantly better looking with each passing year. I've seen women in their twenties do that but not often, and usually it was due to dressing better or weight loss or gain or something like that. My cousin's wife's face is actually getting prettier. There's been no change in her weight as far as I can tell. As far as the way she dresses, she abandoned her Texasy look maybe sometime while I was in high school so it's not that either. It's a phenomenon. My mother agrees, too, so I'm not alone in this.
Maybe all of those creams and shit really work, I don't know.
Well, all that took a while to write and got my mind off things. Actually I feel quite a bit better than I did when I woke up. Now I'm about the same as I was yesterday. Maybe I'll get better as the day goes along.
