I can't really do any running at the moment so I might as well have a bit of a blog about being ill. To last week's symptoms of feeling crap and having a racing heart (and a terrible swimmy head) were added the more classical and familiar sore throat and bunged up nose on Sunday. It seems to come in waves so at times I'm feeling really not too bad and wondering if I should go for a run and at other times just lying on the bed is an effort and every time I stand up it takes a conscious effort not to pass out. Being a nurse I've got a blood pressure and heart rate monitor and thermometer kicking about at home and the numbers keep changing. I don't have a proper fever, just a wee bit high and a wee bit low at times and my heart rate's popping around between kind of 93 and 65 when I'm doing damn all. Thinking beyond the prosaic "Am I going to die?"- ness of the whole thing I think it is clear that there is a battle being fought within. One that I don't know much about. It seems like I'm trying to rev up and slow down at one and the same time.
But I had to go to work today, because of the whole "they're baby-sitting while I'm going out on a date" scenario as spelled out in a previous blog. I've got an interview for another job on Thursday and the interview wouldn't budge about when they wanted to see me so my work have kindly accommodated the fact that I'm going to be late. So there was just no way I could bring myself to phone in sick today because what else could they think but "Well you're not too sick to go out with that OTHER job!" Having a bunged up nose isn't helping with sleeping and so once I'd been awake from 2-30 to 3-30am listening to the light ZZZZs of Buchanan snoring, I decided to decamp into the living room and listen instead to the morning chorus of the gulls on the flat roof of the timber merchant along the street aggressively challenging the sky to a fight. That and the slight vibration of the freezer. (A freezer used solely for holding bags of peas for sprains.)
At about half past four I did finally fall asleep and had a short, hot feverish dream. One in which I was driving along in the countryside at night in the Berlingo with Peter in the passenger seat. We were just driving through a farmyard when I realised that I couldn't see very well and tried to turn the lights up to full beam - but even as I did so I realised the whole battery was draining and the lights went out and the car stopped and we were stuck in the dark in the car in a strange farmyard. End of dream.
My whole life I've had a dislike of farmyards. Probably because I grew up next to and surrounded by one. Our neighbour was notorious for being ill-tempered and discouraging visitors or outsiders. So we weren't made welcome although we were pretty much left alone. If I wanted to go anywhere on my own I had to walk up the farm track past the barn, about half a mile of enemy territory where there were often aggressive geese, hostile sheep, kicking horses and charging bulls - or the potential for them. I was only about 3 feet high so I may have exaggerated the dangers posed by some of these creatures. So being stuck in a strange farmyard in a broken down car in the middle of the night isn't a soothing scenario for me. Although it did occur to me when I woke up I could at least wait til it got light before I got out the car.
So where am I going with this? One of the joys of being ill and having a fuzzy head is I don't really know and I'm not that bothered. There's something about not rushing through that farmyard but lingering there and getting a good feel for which of the animals are truly threatening and which are just in your face. By the time I was 4 feet tall, for instance, geese and sheep didn't seem such a problem. Meanwhile, sitting in the benighted car of NOW waiting to see what will come....erm, I'm starting to feel a bit sleepy, so I think I'll go to bed. G'night!
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