I have pneumonia. Again.
This bout isn't so bad. I feel sorta kinda maybe a bit under the
weather, but I cave and finally go to the walk-in because I cannot stop
coughing and it prevents me (and probably most of the neighborhood) from
getting a full night's (or any) sleep.
Kind of surprises me when the doc announces, "Well, of course you
don't feel well. You've got this spot of
crap in your lung, you idiot."
(Okay, she doesn't quite say it like that, but I know she thinks it
inside her head.) She gives me a print-out
on pneumonia, like I'm not already an expert after going toe to toe with it for
eight rounds, and she also gives me a print-out on chronic acute bronchial infections
simply because she knows eventually I will be back sometime down the road, and
she wants to be able to say this time, "I flippin' told you so!"
School starts, though, both for me as a
teacher and for me as a grad student, so I have to keep going, and, truth be
told, I really don't feel that bad… until I stop moving and sit still.
I have been on my feet for days getting my
classroom ready. I perform for
nearly six hours straight today because the students arrive for Day One and I
am en pointe. After teaching I drive an
hour to attend my afternoon class at the university. A two-and-a-half-hour class. Except that about one hour into it I discover
that the Z-pack meds and Dunkins Coffee Oreo Coolattas do not mix. In fact, they don't even digest
together. One of them has to go, and go
right then and there. The meds would be easy:
one puke and the pill comes up. But
no. It has to be the Colossal
Coolatta Rejection. Four times.
In forty minutes. What a terrific
introduction to my new professor and unsuspecting classmates: "Hello, I'm the student who resides in
the bathroom. My office hours will be as
follows…"
The professor mercifully lets class out
early, but I remain behind, keeping my office hours for a little while longer
because, let's be honest, it's a long ride home with an upset digestive tract. Thankfully there is nothing left of the
Coolatta in any nook or cranny of my system, but I can't say the same for the
university's plumbing. I subconsciously
high-five myself for having the foresight to keep a puke bucket in the car, and
I arrive home safely and without incident but about four pounds lighter than
when I left the house this morning, and I am, ironically enough, ravenously
hungry.
Gosh, I love the first day of
school. Nothing like hacking chunks of a
lung all over your students and making an ass of yourself in front of your
fellow grad-mates and new professor. I
have to admit, though, it makes one hell of a funny story - to someone
else.
