We’ve All Been There: Sick In Bed

FML.

You roll out from underneath your covers to turn off your alarm clock. You’ve got a very busy day ahead of you: three classes, a group meeting and a date with your roommates to catch up on Glee from the past three weeks. Everything has been so busy lately you haven’t had time to eat a meal, let alone get your weekly dose of Finn. If you’re not sleeping, you’re in class, and if you’re not there you’re in the library, oftentimes well past midnight.

And it’s finally catching up to you.

As you try to rouse yourself out of bed, you feel it. Your head hurts, you can’t swallow and your whole body just feels achy. You walk to the bathroom to wash up, hoping it’s just one of those “I slept with my mouth open” deals; it will go away in a few minutes.

Only it doesn’t. In fact, bending over the sink to splash some water on your face makes you dizzy and angers the little men pounding hammers against the inside of your skull. It’s official: you’re sick.

“Oh god. Could it be Swine Flu??”

You crawl back to your room and sit down at your computer. You enter your symptoms into WebMD figure out your diagnosis/rule out any deadly diseases. You learn that you either have the flu… or meningitis. Either way, you need to take your temperature, which you cannot do since you don’t have a thermometer. Maybe you can just sleep it off?

Before getting back into bed, you send a quick email your professors/group members/roommates to let them know that you are sick. You do not mention the word “flu”; you don’t need anyone sending you to the Swine Flu quarantine, thankyouverymuch.

Your body is really hurting now so you shut your computer and climb back into bed. You’re thirsty, you’re achy and, dammit, you want your mom. So you call her. Yeah, she’s over 6 hours away, but at least she’ll tell you what to do… and feel bad for you.

And feel bad she does. She tells you to drink lots of fluids, get lots of rest and call her when you wake up. Even though you knew all of those things, just talking to her makes you feel a little better. You hang up, roll over and go back to sleep.

When you wake up a few hours later you’re feeling worse. You try to drink some water but you can’t swallow. And forget eating; even the thought of a piece of toast makes your stomach churn. You debate going to the health center; those “doctors” a joke and that requires getting dressed and walking across campus. But what other choice do you have? You call your mom.

After getting a sufficient amount of pity and love from mama (“Oh honey, you know I’d bring you soup if I was there.”), you decide to go to the doctor. You pull on your biggest sweats, put your hair up in a ponytail, throw on your glasses and head out. You look like crap and you know it, but you don’t care. As unflattering as those men’s sweatpants are, you still feel a hell of a lot worse than you look. As you walk past other students laughing on their way to class you silently curse the world, asking the guy upstairs why you have to be sick. And why is the health center so far away? And why does everything hurt so badly?

Eventually you make it, sign in and sit down in the room full of coughing students, closing your eyes in hopes it will make your headache go away. 45 minutes and two phone calls to mom later, the doctor calls you in. She spends 6 minutes examining you – which includes questions on your sexual history for some reason – then tells you it’s the flu, there’s nothing she can do and you just need lots of fluid and lots of rest. Then she places her gloved hand on the small of your back and pushes you out of her office so she can let the next sickling in.

You call your mom again on the way home to whine a little more. Then again when you’re back in bed. Then again when your roommate brings you chicken soup that isn’t nearly as good as hers. Then you turn off the phone, dive under your covers and fall asleep. At 7 p.m. Missing yet another week of Glee.

Yeah, we’ve all been there.
There is nothing quite like being sick to make you hate your life and miss your mommy.