Sick as a dog

This past Wednesday I woke to a pain that I wish no one else should ever have to endure. My throat was so swollen that just to swallow the saliva that collects in your mouth resulted in immense pain. That little thing that hangs down in the back of your mouth, the uvula - mine got infected. It was about 5x it's normal size - making speech and swallowing very difficult despite the pain. So I load up and go to the doc. I'm shivering on and off - and it's not cold - so I assume that I'm running a temperature.

When I get to the doc, luckily I got there early because I was the first patient to be seen. I don't know if I got lucky or maybe they noticed I was about to pass out in the waiting room - either way being first was a good thing. They checked my temp in my ear and said it was 99.7 - which estimates my core temp to be approximately 100.7 - not good. I curl up on the examination table and go to sleep. When I wake the doc comes in and is checking me out. The look on his face as he looks in my ears and in my throat is not a good one. You've done it good when a general physician is grossed out at the look of your throat. God knows what else he has to look at for the rest of the day.

So we're gonna get a shot, and some antibiotics, and then some cough syrup with some pain killer in it for the throat. Good deal - no problem - let's get this over with and get on home to the bed. Right hip - ouch - okay time to go....NOPE! Soon as the nurse could get out of the room my temperature hits overdrive, my stomach muscles cramp up, heart rate up, blood pressure drop way down - I'm about to pass out and/or throw up. I go over to the sink in the doctors office and immediately stick my head under the faucet. It was one of those tall sink faucets with quite a bit of clearance so I could get my head under pretty easily. All that was going through my mind was that this had to be from my high temp - and that more heat escaped from the body through the head than any other place on the body - and I couldn't throw up because I had just taken my first antibiotic. Thus my head under the faucet. The nurse notices I didn't file out of the room right behind her, so she comes back and finds me there, and then after a small argument and the discussion that it would be okay if I puked in the floor - she moved me back to the table and put wet paper towels all over me...which helped to cool me down. They then called my mother as obviously, driving wasn't going to be an option at the moment. My mother came and got me - took me home - and I went to bed.

I slept like a baby for a couple of hours, but my temperature wasn't going to stay down that easy. It crept back up and hit me like a hammer - I woke up with the same feeling I had right after I had gotten the shot. However, this time - my antibiotic at this point in time had plenty of time to have been absorbed - so I wasn't worried about trying to not throw up. At this point I've become literally week. I'm aching in places I didn't think were possible to ache and I've got to get to the bathroom. I literally crawl in there - and lose what little water I had been able to put down in the early morning hours, and then some minutes later awaken to find myself laying with my head halfway in the floor of the shower. I somehow made it back to the bed - and slept the rest of the day.

It's amazing to me how close you can feel to God when you feel scared, or sick, or both. The most fascinating thing to me is the natural inclination to start making promises to God if he'll just make you feel better in that state. I try to refrain from that sort of thinking, because it's irrational in my opinion - but no matter what - the thoughts almost always seem to find their way in there. I figure making promises to God could be looked at positively - but with us being creatures of sin - doomed by our own choices - I see making promises as being a bit irresponsible. I.E. I know I will sin again, therefore I see it as irresponsible to promise that I won't. You get the idea. Either way, the point of this writing is more or so a glance into the state-of-mind that one comes into when weakened, sick, and scared - when not in any form of control of one's state of being. The mind tells us to do whatever it takes to get out of that place, out of that sickness or frame of mind. A sort of desperation takes our intuition over and we're left with only the determination to end the suffering as soon as possible. I hate that feeling. I feel like I dread it more than being sick sometimes.

What do you think? Comments welcome.