I am still sick. Quite sick, in fact. No more sick, perhaps, but certainly no less.

Today, possibly, my head will clear enough for me to begin a deluge of posts that, like so much nasal discharge, has been welling up in me for the past 9 days.

Sorry.

My voice is shot. I lost it fully once, for nearly 48 hours. It came back. I then lost it, functionally, for 3 or 4 days. I’ve been fighting it, persisting, forcing it to do my bidding at work and through Fish’s visit, but the larynx is waving a white flag. It is done.

The doctors (since I know you’re asking) analyzed this as allergies exacerbated by a possible cold. They assigned me to take something that wouldn’t show results for 2-3 months. I don’t think feeling like this is going to be viable for 2-3 months, but I’m hoping the idea that this will go away before that date is implied.

The most important day of the entire year at my division of my workplace was Friday. The second most important is Monday. The third most important was Thursday. So I have been persisting, enduring, and blowing out my voice further.

I guess I have always been a little sickly, a little prone to colds and ear infections especially. Anything which gives me the deeply reviled sore throat. My larynx took a beating throughout high school and especially college. I probably lost my voice once a semester on a debate weekend. I tended to have an excellent (maybe undefeated) in-round record with a lost voice and something like an omnidefeated out-round record with same. They are different worlds, and in the latter one is expected to project to an audience beyond the judge, partner, and opponents. Or maybe judges felt a little twinge in the back of their mind during out-rounds: if he loses, he can stop debating and get some rest.

Rest doesn’t really help this one. I feel very tired most of the time, but lying down upsets the careful balance of sinus/nasal/eustachian canals and prompts one side or the other to hurt badly and everything to get clogged. It takes about 45 minutes to recover from the intense pain of having lied down. At least I can sleep now, unlike the first 48 hours of this thing.

So I must be getting better. Just older. As one ages, one’s body starts reminding one of its existence. I think I’ve lived a life as oblivious to my body as possible, except when facing obviously risky situations (e.g. riding bicycles, swimming). I don’t think of myself as corporeal, and the more I have to, the more weighed down I feel by existence. And sometimes plain freaked out. But more and more (I know, I’m not yet even 28), my body will say Hello. Or yelp for Help. And it will take longer, longer, longer to recover from illness. Many people, one who I work with closely, in their 40’s and 50’s seem to take weeks to recover from colds. Sometimes literally months. It’s unimaginable, but it seems to be the future.

It could be worse. But I’m really ready for it to be better.