I can always tell when it’s the holiday season. Because the holiday season is the Time To Get Ill. Almost without fail every single year, at some point around Christmas/New Year, my body goes “Nope! Had enough. Here’s some snot. Happy Christmas!” and buggers off for a few days.
This year is no exception. I thought I’d escaped, because for the whole time I was over in California visiting my brother for the holidays, I was fine, despite everyone around me gradually sinking into a mire of barking repeatedly like someone with Spatchcock’s Ever-Coughing Syndrome. Including the dog. Who was actually barking, not coughing.
On the plane ride on the way home, though, I felt the illness hit. Several other Spatchcock’s sufferers on the flight coupled with yummy delicious recycled air being pumped around the cabin meant a breeding ground for germs. And sure enough… “Had enough. Here’s some snot. Happy Christmas!”
Well, you’re late, illness glands. And, you know, you really didn’t have to get me anything this year. I just got you a bunch of pills, and I know you don’t really like them that much.
The most irritating thing about suffering with Spatchcock’s Syndrome is how difficult it makes sleeping. When you lie down in bed with Spatchcock’s, you are constantly in one of two states: mouth-breathing, or coughing.
The mouth-breathing comes because your nose is so full of juicy snot that if you didn’t mouth-breathe you’d suffocate and die, and suffocating and dying because of snot would just be embarrassing. If you do happen to get to sleep whilst in the mouth-breathing phase, your snores will qualify as some of the most disgusting noises on the planet and will probably involve bubbling. If you are sleeping with anyone at the time, this is a sure-fire way to find out if they really love you or not.
The coughing usually comes when you manage to clear your nose a little bit, and inevitably brings up more snot to join the party. The noise and the irritation in your throat wakes you and anyone in the same building up, and once it passes you’re back to mouth-breathing again.
So you probably end up not sleeping until your brain is so devoid of power that it goes into laptop-style hibernation mode and fails to wake you up until lunchtime the next day. And because you slept at a weird time, you end up feeling crappy the next day, which compounds the whole situation further.
Eventually you just decide to not sleep any more until this dratted pox departs your system, during which time you gradually slip into a hallucinogenic fantasy which you can’t quite decide whether is good or bad or somewhere in between and then you die. Possibly.
I am grateful for one thing, though: at least it’s not full-on achey joints flu, which I’ve only been struck down with once at a time that happened to coincide with a Christmas I was set to spend alone in my house due to holiday retail work commitments and the rest of my family doing other things. Elsewhere. Without me.
Remind me why I want to get a job again?
