Millions of people are in far worse shape than I. People around the globe live in extreme poverty, are exposed to existential dangers posed by war, face climate disasters that could bring utter ruin, or any combination of other horrors much more severe than mine.
Still, I feel pretty shitty. My head is stopped up, as is my chest, I have a loud and painful cough, my throat is sore, my badly aching joints and muscles are causing me all kinds of grief, and I have a headache that vacillates between painful and simply bothersome. I have slept—or attempting to sleep—in the neighborhood of 52 hours since Monday afternoon. Whether it is the flu or a severe cold, it will disappear in its own time. I’ve tested, twice, for COVID-19 and the results are negative.
Until my symptoms disappear—or until they are, at least, tolerable—I will try to extricate myself from my inexplicable need to blog every day. Even this short post is draining. But at least I am not facing war, extreme poverty, and other horrors that face so many people on the planet today. I am trying my very best to be grateful for the situation in which I live…and I’m trying to find my maladies tolerable.
Until I blog again, I hope you have all manner of reasons to be satisfied and grateful for your positions on the planet.
Clay, I’ll keep those symptoms and their relationship to Chikungunya and Dengue in my pocket if I don’t improve in the next five days or so. I hope I have a simple, if fierce, cold. Robin, Thanks for the good wishes; I hope to have this behind me within a week.
John, your symptoms strike me a lot like those of what is locally called ¨bone break fevers, mosquito transmitted ailments:
Chikungunya Symptoms:
Headache
Fever
Muscle pain
Joint pain and swelling
Rash
Dengue Symptoms
Nausea, vomiting.
Rash.
Aches and pains (eye pain, typically behind the eyes, muscle, joint, or bone pain)
It is a long time since you have been down here but these things can lie dormant and your local docs probably don’t check for tropical ailments.
Thank you for this update, John. I had been thinking of you and wondering how you were doing. Please take care there and get well.