01 July 2012

The last two weeks

I'm not even going to pretend to remember what happened every day for the last two weeks. The good stuff - celebrated my nana's 90th birthday with her; started a new project at work; went clothes shopping with my 14 year old ('cause I'd rather going shopping with you mum than my friends); starting seeing the naturapath again.
The not so good stuff - got a viral throat infection. I actually didn't feel all that sick. Just had a sore throat and no voice. No other standard 'cold' symptoms. Went to the doctor in case it was tonsillitis (which is often bacterial and therefore treatable with antibiotics). He gave me the week off so I didn't spread my germs about. I felt like I spent most of the lolly-gagging about for nothing. Until Thursday night. During the wee hours of Thursday morning my feet were a bit itchy. Thursday night my right shoulder blade was itchy, and my feet, and behind my left knee. Friday morning I was covered in hives.
Hives are incredibly annoying, but they are (in my case) actually a sign that I'm on the mend. The way it was explained to me - my body ramps up white blood cell production to take on the virus (that's normal). When the virus is defeated the extra white blood cells are supposed "stand down", mine don't. They look for something else to attack. There's no more virus, so they attack me. Therefore the hives are a sign that the virus has been defeated. Doesn't actually make they any more pleasant.
In fact this time, the hives took it out of me more than the blasted virus. I've spent most of the last three days sleeping. Partly hive induced, partly steroid induced. The steroids relieve the inflammation, but they nasty blighters and I'm guessing not performance enhancing.
I have provided amusement for my Facebook friends, however. Saturday I did my impression of a botox experiment gone wrong. Everything swells up and is really tender. Thankfully my feet didn't swell too badly this time; walking is agony when they do. My hands did swell and using a knife and fork to eat was out of the question. My charming man has a warped sense of humour. He gracious poached me eggs for breakfast and did his best "feeding the toddler" impression, complete with airplane noises. I think it was my most liked status update ever.
I don't mind the hives, the itching, the swelling quite so much as I mind the indignity of not being able to do for myself. Not sure how well I'm going to deal with old age.

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