Feeling better *cough*

Last night I developed a cough and didn’t sleep well, but one or other of these factors mean that today I feel miles better than I have in ages. Adrenaline or a good hard kick up my immune system or whatever means that although my throat hurts and my glands are like golf balls, I am (relatively) on top of the world. Yesterday was dreadful. How do I qualify dreadful? Well, I got to the point when I kept bursting into tears because everything hurt so much and I felt so sick and tired (as in sick and also tired as opposed to fed up – although I was that too). Plus when I’m more ill, the codeine’s effects become more profound, I get more confused, vision blurs or bends (as in you watch your hand move one piece on the chessboard but a moment later you realised you moved the one next to it) and for the last few days I have been experiencing things that are not really happening.

I have a history of this sort of thing when I have been very ill before or reacting badly to drugs; this is not a road I want to go down. Fortunately, these things at the moment are just random, like coming into a room and smelling something that I can’t smell. Like cigarettes and coffee, when nobody smokes in the house and nobody has been drinking coffee. Or smelly feet where there are no smelly feet, smelly shoes or camembert anywhere to be found. Or feeling a breeze on my face when all the windows are shut and I know for sure I’m not in a draft. I'm having loads of these every day, but it’s not screwing me up too badly; these experiences aren’t associated with any fear; I just experience it, consider it odd, try to explain it, fail to explain it and move on. I’m only afraid about where this leads, like I say.

I expect it leads nowhere. Although I have been struggling to cope with this latest downer, I don’t think I’m depressed and so long as I’m treading water, I don’t expect to have any complex or negative hallucinations. I know I’m going to feel better soon. And of course today I do feel much better. Plus even though I’ve been laid up, it’s not like I’ve been unable to use my computer or talk on the phone – at least some of the time. And I managed the cinema on Tuesday; that was significant. Unfortunately my miserable brain thinks that I went to the
cinema weeks ago and I haven’t been able to do anything for months on end.

I can’t remember having a cough before – not one independent of a cold. It is quite easy to deal with. It hurts, but pain is relative and relative to what else is going on, this is not painful at all. And of course unlike with a cold I can breath easily and my taste-buds still work. I am very cheerful about this cough.

So all in all I am feeling good.