Contagion, War, and Gatsby

Getting sick feels weird. We all know the feeling, but it's so hard to describe. It's that pre-ache that surges through your veins before any real symptoms arrive. It doesn't hurt, and it doesn't really impact your daily performance, but it's there. Like you can feel some malevolent spirit that just decided to take residence in your body. You've been possessed by a nasty little virus and, though it hasn't begun its assault, you can feel it using your arms, legs, and chest as a staging area.

I seem to have a talent for contracting illness. I'll wake up one morning and feel the preliminary symptoms. It's subtle and for a while I wonder if it's just in my head. So I mentally fight it off, going about my business until the symptoms get worse. Then it's time for the Airborne. I won't let an army a billionth my size defeat me. If I'm going down, I'm going down swinging.

Throughout the day, as I begin to feel a fever coming on, I get a little weird, almost animal. Fists clenched, muscles tightened, short grunts - whatever I can do to psyche myself into somehow vanquishing the plague using sheer willpower. I don't know why this feels effective; it's not like tensed bicep muscles are going to crush whatever battalion has set up a front there. I suppose it helps with morale more than anything. And if there's anything I've learned from playing Total War games, morale is the most important aspect of wartime.

Yesterday followed this pattern for the most part, and toward the end of the day I thought I may have won early in the war. Went to hang out with a friend for a while and we decided to wrap up the day by watching Gatsby.

I've never tripped acid before, but I now think I know what it's like.

Gatsby's visuals are deafeningly loud. Bright colors, quick cuts, awkward pans and zooms. My retinas still haven't forgiven me. It's already a trippy movie on its own, but about a third of the way through, I began to hear klaxon sirens in my head. The enemy has returned, this time with reinforcements. All of my defenses were down; I thought I had already won the war! The virus struck fast and hard, and by the time the movie was only halfway finished, I had become feverish and delirious. This is where the trip began.

This was an opportunistic pestilence. It's as if it knew that my mind had been weakened by the film, so it played this to its advantage. Nearly an hour left in the film. I'd have to sit there sweating, sinking deeper into delirium as Gatsby bombarded me from the outside while the virus attacked from within. No amount of muscle tensing or jaw clenching was going to save me this time. It was a losing battle. I did what I could to enjoy the rest of the film (which I succeeded at, it was a very entertaining movie) but by the end, I was ready to get out of there. We left the theatre and I didn't even feel up to driving myself home. I had to resort to the unthinkable and let my friend drive my car.

I arrived at home, quickly downed some NyQuil, and checked my temperature. 99.6. That's worse than it sounds. Thanks to my dad's genetics, my normal core temperature is 96.8 degrees rather than the usual 98.6. Definitely a 100+ fever. I collapsed into bed, waiting for the drugs to knock me out. I certainly wasn't falling asleep on my own accord. The sheets were too hot, but the air was too cold.

I woke up at 2pm. No symptoms, aside from a fairly gross taste in my mouth. It's over.

Now I'm just thinking about all the other times I've gotten sick. I've been out for days at a time with severe illnesses before, but usually it lasts a day and I'm done with it. One night of sleep and the virus is dead. It's always a trippy experience, too. You know the PBS show Wishbone? About the dog that reads and reenacts old stories? That show will always seem ultra-weird to me because I only remember it airing during the school day. That means I would only watch it when I had to stay home sick. Wishbone isn't the only show like this, it's just the only one I can remember right now.

There's never an end to this story. You ever recover from a sickness and think, "What if that was the last time I ever get sick? What if that's all my immune system needed to fight off everything from now on? That was miserable, so I'm going to do everything I can to stay in shape and be healthy forever."

Nope. Gonna get sick again. And it's going to suck. But I'm an American. Preparing for war is what we do. (Whoa! Political statement out of nowhere!) Now it's time to get stronger and wait for the next time.