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In Bed with a Sick Mind
By David Glenn Cox
I’ve been out of action for the last few days, I was sick. There’s sick, and then there’s Sick, and I was Sick. I won’t say it was the H1N1 virus; I don’t know but that’s as good a guess as any. What started Friday morning as a tickle in my chest was, by sundown Friday, completely debilitating.
You never see these types of illnesses portrayed in Hollywood. The aliens come down and blow up the White House and millions are killed and injured because Will Smith has the flu. We see films about traumatized vets dealing with emotional and physical injuries but nothing about the airman at NORAD who fails to see the volley of incoming missiles because when he breathes his chest rattles ring in his ears.
The flu gets respect when the government talks about it but very little when you and I do. Back when I had a job I called in one day to tell my employer that I had the flu and wouldn’t be in for the day. His reaction was, “For the flu? You’re not coming in because of the flu? You’ll be in tomorrow then, won’t you?”
In his book fiery auto crashes, amputations and major surgery were the only acceptable reasons for absence. I could never make him understand that by pressuring us to work when we were sick he was increasing his absenteeism. The sick person would soldier on and spread the illness throughout the company.
This time I found myself flat on my back on my little loveseat, wrapped in a blanket like a cocoon. There were no lights or sounds, just the reflection of the street light through the venetian blinds. I laid there motionless for hours with no thought of time of day or day of the week. When I tried to raise up or to turn over it was like I was drunk. My head was swimming and as I stood to use the restroom I took labored, staggering steps.
When you feel that awful and your employer treats you like you called in with a Homer Simpson excuse, you dream of going into the office and giving him a big, wet French kiss. With lots and lots of extra tongue just so he will have some inkling of what you’re going through.
Stooped over like an old man, I made my way to the bathroom and turned on the light. My eyes objected immediately and slammed shut, but as they began to submit they relented and I could see myself in the mirror. My eyes were so red that there really wasn’t any white left. My eyeballs were bloated and throbbing in their sockets, and my face around them was swollen and puffy. My skin was a ghostly white; I looked like the survivor at the end of a slasher picture in the back seat of the police car. “You’ll be in tomorrow then, won’t you?”
Through the flu we feel the inner connectivity of all of our body parts. Sitting up made my head swim which threw my body out of balance. My ears began to ring and as I dropped my blanket I began to experience chills which caused my teeth to chatter. Then returning to our cocoon we try one by one to quell the side affects from the dangerous act of standing up. I filled a bowl with cold water and grabbed a clean washcloth and sat it beside my bed. I would dip the cloth in the cool water and alternate placing it on my forehead and my eyes.
My forehead rejoiced as the water cooled my simmering brow, but my hands rebelled at being exposed to the cold water and they remained cold. I would quickly tuck them back under the covers and lay them upon my chest or under my back for heat. My toes as well were almost given up for gone as no amount of shimming or shunting would warm them. I finally tried wearing my fuzzy slippers in bed with me.
The flu, the real flu, reminds me in many ways of an acid trip without the euphoria, the disordering of our mind, the meaninglessness of time and space. It's as if the virus runs rampant through our brain, dumping out the files of trivia and the minutia of life onto the floor of our mind. At one point I was battling a giant octopus that turned out to be my blanket pinned under my head. There were surrealistic images in melting bright colors that boiled into black clouds. Then just as quickly the black clouds became sheer mountain summits, sharp with serrated edges. I asked myself, "Where is the snow on those mountain peaks? There should be snow there."
Was I asleep and dreaming? Or was I awake and raving? I couldn’t tell but I knew inwardly that the absence of snow had more to do with my wash cloth being dry and warm. My outside temperature was affecting the thoughts inside my loosened and diseased mind. That is indeed a novel experience, my fevered brain painting fifty Salvador Dalis an hour and a crack in the blanket allowing in cold air could change the subject matter from Dante’s inferno to juggling circus polar bears.
My back ached so I had to sit up and readjust myself. I laid my head back and closed my eyes. Under my eyelids was a light show in living black and white, flickering like a silent film with psychedelic geometric patterns. Steamboat Willie on the river Styx, but I was far too sick to enjoy it. I could only take note of it in passing. Then there was daylight again through the window.
I slept until I could no longer sleep and then laid awake searching for sleep and saying the prayer that all flu sufferers say to themselves, “Tomorrow has got to be better than today.” Such are prayers, we hope for the best but we are not too awfully surprised when they aren’t answered. So I spent a second twenty-four hours much like the first. My chest was burning and rattling and reminding me that the flu can be lethal. I put such thoughts out of my mind as foolish optimism as my condition had grown so miserable. Had the devil offered me death or cure on a coin toss I would have let him use his own coin, as either was a worthy release.
Sunday came and returned my appetite. I didn’t have any food here in the garage so I would have to walk for it. I combed my hair and brushed my teeth and shaved and then decided that I wasn’t that hungry after all. I went back to bed and woke in the early evening ready to try it again. I checked my appearance in the mirror and was frightened by it. My red eyes were just slits, sunk back into their sockets surrounded by purple blue semicircles with an ashen white complexion.
The clerks at the store looked at me as if I had been smoking crack all night and meth all the next day. I didn’t care; I was past concern about public appearance. I was frightening to small children and knew it.
I was returning and about to do battle with my nemesis that was a traffic light that only changes four times an hour. Being Sunday, under normal circumstances I might have tried to run for it when the traffic was clear, but these were a far cry from normal circumstances. The light had changed when I was about fifty feet away from it so I accepted the wait time. As I reached the light I pressed the crosswalk button and the next thing I remembered was traffic stopping at the light as I had fallen asleep standing up.
Monday I had begun to feel somewhat better. I got up and made coffee for the first time since Friday. I got cleaned up and shaved and then rested on the couch. I was better but not well. I was feeling human but still taking stutter steps with bouts of feeling disoriented. As the day progressed I helped my son push a car and then went to immediately sit back down. It was a bad move. I had used up all of my accumulated energy reserve and was now sick again.
So, as I sat here I began to meditate and contemplate what the explosion of ideas and images of monsters, demons, angels and ten speed bicycles meant. The silly, the superfluous, the hideous and sincere, and what that all really means. Was it a warning flare from the cosmic consciousness reminding us that we only sublet our minds from true genius? That when we seek creativity we don’t need to look without but within. The masterpieces and Nobel Prize theories are already in your head if you can just find a way through the conscious maze to unlock them.
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