The Taming of the Flu

A dog's day. A lot like me on the couch this week.

I don't know what photos to include that would represent my tale: The Taming of the Flu. (Ya can't just throw in a lake or a sunset). But even as I sprawled on my sick couch, I was receiving photos and videos of my daughter's brand new Retriever puppy (who threw up from too much experimentation in the backyard).

 I was sick as a dog this week, although it wasn't something I ate, and certainly not in the backyard. I did lose my appetite for food--and life. If this comes every ten or twenty years or so, I should be able to handle it, I kept telling myself. But the flu, more accurately, influenza, is a big killer, and so much more of a threat than Ebola ever was in this country.

It's my own fault that I don't like to drug myself into a stupor when I get sick. My head felt better with sleep, but I avoided drugs as long as I could as I went into an observably vegetative state, buried deep into the living room couch. I really didn't appreciate that big bright television much the first day or two, but my trusty smart phone with the brightness turned way down kept me company.

I still like to think (inaccurately) that the dog days of summer occur when it is so hot that you lie around like the family dog on a hot afternoon. I had some winter dog days--as I barely emerged out of the couch and from under the Sunbeam electric throw.

I don't recall being so ill since the year I self-diagnosed with West Nile Virus when it first hit Michigan--I think 2002, in August. I did go in to the doctor then because of my concern over the weakness in my limbs that followed a sudden high fever with violent chills. And I had petted a sick bird on a fence post in my backyard! But the doctor just laughed when I told him I had West Nile Virus and ordered no tests except a simple one that showed a reduced white cell count, as I recall.

This time I just soldiered through, figuring I had to get better sooner or later. Unlike the returning Ebola doctor who went bowling and took subways in New York City, I self-quarantined. On the couch.

 (I promise, no more Ebola references--but even Time magazine picked Ebola and its doctors as the star of the year!)

I am sick of even thinking about being sick!

I missed a few social events but caught up on all the hoopla on Capitol Hill as a debt crisis once again loomed. Remember the fiscal cliff? I learned about the CRomnibus Bill and saw lawmakers making strange bedfellows as they carved out their own political futures in floor speeches.

It is sick to be so entertained by the dysfunction in DC, but in this case, it distracted me from my own pathetic dog days on the couch.

The invention of words also entertains me: "Cromnibus."

 "Grubered." One of my favorite writers called it Gruber's Pants Inferno (...liar liar etc.) So funny. Or was I on meds by then?? A DC enrichment of the language occurred this week that rivals the era when Clinton was given a "Lewinsky." Don't know the plural form of that one. But they came plurally! What a dirty dog he was...

Okay, enough already, you say.

I am now on the mend and once again have the energy to get off the couch and sit at my laptop. (If only I had had a lapdog to keep me company!)

Tomorrow I face my final loss in the first round of playoffs in Fantasy Football. It won't be so bad to lose to the top dog who early rose to the head of the pack and is probably the winner of this year's contest. He lives in another country and is a math whiz, but he is also a lucky dog. I predict I will once again place 4th for the year, which is still pretty respectable.

(I Dirty-Dog-throwing-up-Dare him to beat me!!)