You know how in horror and even in action films there is this music that they play to let you know that something bad is about to happen? I think life should come with a soundtrack like that. At least then, even if we didn’t have a hope of escaping situations that are coming our way, at least we could get some kind of forewarning.
Last week my son got home after being gone for a few days. The next morning I see him walking towards me with a flashlight in his hand. Now, for everyone that does not know my son, that’s a clue and not a good one. That is where the theme music should have kicked in. He walks up to me, holding the flashlight out and says, ‘How does my throat look?’ In my head my brain was screaming, “NOOOOO!” Taking the flashlight from his hand, I lift it up and shine it into his open mouth. As I already figured at this point, his throat was all red, tonsil on one side all swelled up, drainage happening. I probably don’t need to tell you. I suspect probably all of us have had some sort of head cold/flu virus at one point or another. Whatever the current strain is that is currently going around that is highly contagious and when you live in a house with a family, too often manages to screw up weeks of your life at a time. Not for lack of trying though, I tell you.
I turned off the flashlight and announced to the room, ‘I’m not taking it. Not doing it.’ No way. No how. Not doing it. And for the first four days I was able to hold out hope that maybe, just maybe, he would be the only one to get sick. I sprayed handles and doorknobs with bleach cleaner. I didn’t have him unload the dishwasher. We ran the dishwasher on sterilize. We didn’t use the same hand towels. I took copious amounts of vitamin C and zinc. On day five, my husband came home sick after work. On day six I woke up, just not feeling right. But I fought it. I said, ‘I refuse. I’m not doing this. I’m not taking this. I don’t have time for this.’ I changed my sheets. Washed the blankets on my bed. Sprayed everything I came into contact with with bleach cleaner that I could. But by that evening, my body let me know I couldn’t ignore it anymore.
That was five days ago. Since then, my son is pretty much down to the lingering cough. My husband seems pretty much back to normal. Which is typical for him. He’s one of those people who get sick, sleep for a couple of days and then they are pretty much back to normal and healthy. People who can do that, you don’t know how lucky you are. Really. Meanwhile, I basically didn’t sleep for the first two nights. Kind of got some sleep the third night. Then last night…. My symptoms shifted. Instead of not being able to sleep due to the congestion, I couldn’t sleep because of the itchy spasming in my throat. One second I’m laying there, feeling okish, the next I feel like I might cough up my esophagus. Then around six I coughed so hard, it felt like a headache/borderline migraine exploded into my head. I’m still beating that back many hours later.
But at some point over these last few days, I did have a thought go through my head. ‘Why is it that when I get sick, I seem to be so much sicker than other sick people around me?’ Which may sound whiny, but there is a point here really.
Since at that point I was just laying around blowing my nose every two seconds (that might not be an exaggeration. At least for part of it.), I decided to ask AI. Yes AI. Don’t judge. I felt too sick to work harder than that. Now obviously I couldn’t just ask AI why I was sicker. It wouldn’t know. I had to to come up with something to ask. Something that maybe could answer the question of why I was sicker. When the thought popped in my head that I used to feel like this all the time with my type two inflammation, I had the question to ask. Without further ado, I asked AI, “Can the flu cause type two inflammation symptoms to flare up?” The answer, in a nutshell, was, ‘Yes.’ Houston, we have an answer. That’s the good news. The bad news is that that means that there is not a whole lot that I can do to really speed the process along. Which is a really bummer. But I felt vindicated that I at least was right in what was causing it and it wasn’t some other unknown random thing lurking around in my body that I didn’t know about. So, if you also have type two inflammation and are wondering why it is that it seems like you get sicker than the average Joe, now you can know, blame the type two inflammation. Apparently viruses are just one more thing that your immune system considers a ‘trigger’ and uses as an excuse to further jump onto hyper overdrive. (Because you needed one more thing right?)
From my perspective, it’s just best to try and avoid viruses, as I try to avoid as many other triggers as I can. How am I supposed to avoid these kinds of things without some kind of every warning? So, what I want to know is…. Where is my soundtrack?
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