April 17 - Sick

The summer I turned seventeen, I got to spend a month in Spain with my classmates. We were in Madrid for two days, Salamanca for three weeks, and the Costa del Sol for three or four days before we then went home. By the time we got to the Costa del Sol, some of us got sick. It was inevitable - twenty-some-odd teenagers staying out all night, functioning on three hours of sleep a night for a month, some dealing with their first (or first legal) hangovers, and all smushed together in buses and hotel rooms, we were bound to get sick. Not to mention, it was hot and humid as hell where we were staying. And I distinctly remember my one friend, who I am still somewhat in touch with today, just felt like ass for the whole end of the trip. He had somehow come into a sombrero on the trip, and thought it would be funny to walk around the hotel halls in jean shorts, a t-shirt, socks, flip-flops, and this sombrero, and holding a knife one of our other friends had picked up as a souvenir. In our sickness, we thought it was hysterically funny, too. And he would sort of sing (even though I'm pretty sure he would tell you he doesn't sing) "I feel crappy," as if he was singing "I Feel Pretty" from West Side Story, but those were the only words he knew. And since we all found this rib-ticklingly delightful, he was laughing while he did it. So I have this very vivid memory of my friend dressed silly, wielding a knife, singing "I feel crappy." It is one of my most treasured memories. 

So now when I feel crappy, I feel like I have to have the same positive attitude about celebrating my illness that my friend had all those many years ago. I feel like death. Yay! It's certainly more fun than having a pity party about it. 

January 16 - Healing

The human body really is miraculous. Every time I'm suffering from some ailment or some injury, I am reminded of just how remarkable it is that my body has these defenses and mechanisms with which to heal itself.

Take this cold I have at the moment. Likely a viral infection procured at some point during my UK trip. We were surrounded by screaming babies everywhere we went, and I was in a giant metal tube full of recycled air speeding through the atmosphere for 6-8 hours at a stretch on four different occasions in a 10-day time period. Okay, two of those flights were an hour long each, but still. Transatlantic flights are long and if there is one sick person on the flight, everyone else gets to go home with a cold. Yay!

But my body has decided that the best way to get rid of this cold is to produce more mucus. Being nice and thick and viscous, the mucus is supposed to trap the viral cells and help neutralize and expel them from my body, primarily via my nose. For this reason, my right nostril has become the World Champion of Mucus Production. If there was such a thing. I have been blowing my nose approximately every twenty minutes all morning long, and even when I've blown it to the point where I can breathe clearly and I'm pretty sure I popped a blood vessel in my eye from blowing my nose so hard, within twenty minutes, I need to start the process all over again:

• Blow nose, using 2-4 tissues as volume requires. 
• Wash hands. 
• Put hand sanitizer on that spot under my nose above my lip to get rid of the feeling of mucus that was just there as I blew my nose. 
• Revel in being able to breathe for about ten breaths. 
• Sniffle for a bit. 
• Repeat.

It's hard to get anything productive done when this has to be kept up at twenty minute intervals.

But I have faith that my little mucus factory will get rid of all of the virus particles residing in my nose within the next day or so. And I'll do my part to help expel them in a timely fashion. I'm sure we're all looking forward to taking a break from this crazy overtime schedule.

Yay biology!

January 15 - Ugh

Feeling like crap. Stop.
Nose won't stop dripping. Stop.
Send soup. Stop.
Send new nose. Stop.

December 6 - War

Last night, my sinuses started getting organized. They had a meeting, aired their demands. It's the same demands every year - more space! Sadly, my face just isn't big enough to accommodate all of the space my sinuses demand without sacrificing essential elements like the eyes or the tongue. The rest of my face argues that the sinuses should learn to function within their limits - hell, they've had enough time to figure out how to do so - but the sinuses always push back with the argument, "We've been working, and working well, within our limitations. But things change, man, and every good working system needs to grow to meet new challenges and rise to the occasion when called upon. And what's this extra pollen and dust and germy crap we have to deal with?" The face tried to appease the sinuses with more vitamin C and herbal tea and more sleep, so some of the energy devoted to the eyes can be re-routed to dealing with the extra pollen and dust and germy crap. But in the end, it always turns into an all out war, with the sinuses staging a coup and then threatening to secede from the rest of the face.

I am hoping this year, with enough preemptive vitamin C and sleep, I might be able to cut the war short before there is too much bloodshed. Because seriously, who wants to spend the holidays abroad with a war going on in their face? Not me. That's who.

November 14 - Ugh

In typical Kitty fashion, I seem to be getting sick just in time for opening night. I know why it happens, and I know why it happens with such alarming regularity. I just wish I could figure out a way to make it stop happening.

See, by the time we get to tech week, my schedule has gone kablooie and I always end up spending a week not really sleeping. Wake up, go to work, run home, (hopefully) eat dinner before going to the theatre, rehearse until 10 or 11pm (or later), go home, try to sleep, wake up, go to work... I say "try to sleep," because I am often unsuccessful. I'm usually kind of buzzed after a performance, and as one who has problems falling asleep anyway, it makes it that much harder to quiet my brain down enough to get some sleep before I have to get up and do it all again. So by opening night, after a week of not sleeping well and sometimes not eating well, my body says, "Fuck this," and fills itself up with spare phlegm in an attempt to force me to slow down and take care of myself for a day. My skin usually likes to join in the rebellion, too, and starts sprouting volcanoes on my chin. Good fun.

And it is for this reason that I did just about every show I did in college on DayQuil. My dear friend DayQuil, helping me through theatrical performances since 1998. I'd like to avoid taking something before the show tomorrow, but I think the only way to do that may be to take a sick day.

We'll see how I feel in the morning.