It's 6.25 am. I'm lying in a broth of night-sweat and bed-life croutons: DVDs, telephones, a thermometer, packets of pills, crumpled New Yorkers and The Weeks, an old and boring William Boyd novel and various species of gadget.
I've been awake since 4.30am, moaning discreetly and trying to remember which pills I popped when. Not that they do anything at all to erode the great pulsing bag of pain behind my eyes. I took my temperature: a satisfying 39.1. I went online to check out the symptoms of malaria. I've clearly got it - look at the photo.
The sweet nurse on NHS Direct with the voice of a teenage Kirsty Wark clearly thinks so too. Though she couldn't say it. I wept a little at the tenderness in her voice as she told me not to go to hospital now but wait till the Doctor's surgery opens. What's really cool about recurrent chronic severe malaria is you get to tidy up the medicine cupboard. Since Saturday I've eaten nearly every pill in there.
If it's cerebral malaria then I will be dead before breakfast, and thus my first ever blog will also be my last. I wonder if anyone will use it for my obituary. I wonder if I'll get an obituary.
Goodbye (just in case).
If it's cerebral malaria then I will be dead before breakfast, and thus my first ever blog will also be my last. I wonder if anyone will use it for my obituary. I wonder if I'll get an obituary.
Goodbye (just in case).
4 comments:
Tell us more about the sweet-voiced nurse. What did she say to you? Exact words. And in your mind's eye, how did she look? Sort of brown hair scraped back, crisp white uniform? It almost sounds like some sort of sexual fantasy of yours ...
I'm very sorry to hear about your cold. Have you tried lemsip?
Come, come. Thursday is a day for shrugging of a sickie. It prepares one for calling into the office of a Friday lunchtime to say, "I think I could manage a little light paperwork but I should probably wait until Monday now." That way you're perfectly set up for a devastating relapse on the Sunday evening...
marcus that's wise. And valuable coming from a serial shirker like you...
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