I’m sick.  It’s been nearly three weeks of coughing and stuffy noses.  And also, there was the fever.

I wasn’t feeling so great the day of Jeff’s birthday.  I tried to believe that it was just lack of vitamins and that I wasn’t drinking enough water.  Also, it was after the holidays, I was surely just run down and tired.  We laid in bed almost the entire day following his birthday, Jeff because of the 20+ shots he’d done the night before, and me because I just wasn’t feeling right.  We managed to crawl upstairs sometime that evening and take in some TV.  I knew something was wrong when I woke up a few episodes of CSI later and realized that I had pulled off my socks, rolled my jeans above my knees, and thrown all four blankets off the couch.  I took one look at Jeff, his shoes on because his toes were cold and an afghan wrapped around his shoulders, and knew I had the plague.  I’m always the cold one.  Ridiculously colder then everyone else.  Yeah, something was definitely wrong.

The next time I woke up, to Jeff asking me if I was still breathing, I burst into tears.  Boys, best friends or not, are very much unskilled at handling the Female Crying Scenario.  All he could do was offer every cold remedy he could think of: soup, drugs, juice.  I vaguely remember sobbing something about not feeling good, and my death being imminent.  Hi, I’m lots of fun when I have a fever!

The next thing I knew it was six in the morning, and I had no idea where I was.  I’d fallen asleep on the couch again, waking up from the alarm going off downstairs.  Just enough life force left in me to stumble downstairs, smack the hell out of that alarm, and fall asleep for another seven hours.  One more wake up crying episode later I managed to drive home.  Not the smartest decision I’ve ever made, driving with a raging fever barely able to keep my eyes open, but let’s face it:  When you’re sick nothing is better then your own couch.

And that’s where I’ve been ever since.  It’s definitely the plague.