Still Alive (Barely)

Apologies for the long pause between posts. I have a good excuse. Those among my dear friends who predicted that I would get sick as soon as I stopped working will be annoyingly and no doubt noisily gratified to hear that I've spent the last several days doing my best impression of someone dying horribly.

We're not quite sure what disease, or combination of diseases it was that laid me so low. It started with a sore throat on Christmas morning and proceeded rapidly through a dizzying array of symptoms that suggest a combination of Influenza, Malaria, Dysentery, Ebola and Anthrax. I'm calling it Fijian Flu for brevity.

As a very small upside at least this adventure has given me an opportunity to acquaint myself with a wide range of American pharmaceutical products. Reading the labels (because I don't recognise any of the brands) I was surprised to find that Australian over-the-counter drugs are generally stronger. However my symptoms were certainly consistent with that discovery. I felt unrelentingly awful for five solid days. I tucked myself into bed on Christmas day with a mild sore throat, looking forward to a long night of endless tossing, turning, coughing and nose blowing, followed by headachy and feverish birthday celebrations with Dad, Patricia, Scott and Marcus at a local Teppanyaki restaurant. They were all delightful, including the staff who sang Happy Birthday to Me in Japanese. I was an ungrateful, coughing, shivering wreck.

Over the next several days, my symptoms multiplied, my fever climbed and my hydration gained a prefix, followed by a range of increasingly vehement adjectives. I became so sick, self-pitying and paranoid that I started to hallucinate. I fantasised that this was some kind of killer virus that I picked up as I passed through the transfer lounge in Nadi. I imagined that my eyeballs would pop out of my head when the pressure in my sinuses became too great, a state that always seemed imminent. The mysterious stabbing pain in my side was probably my liver breaking down. I could have already infected Fresno and the contagion would spread across the USA like wildfire. I was a breathing (admittedly badly) biological weapon of mass destruction. Scott had already carried my revenge for the effects of Smallpox on indigenous populations back to Wisconsin. Biologists of the future would remember my name as the source of the infection. I was going to die, but at least my death would be remembered.

Perhaps regrettably I appear to be making a full recovery. I am now eating small quantities of solid food and am being a tourist again. I will attempt to catch up over the next few days with a few missing bits of news, like Christmas Day, and how I came to be typing this in a Monterey hotel room instead of from my deathbed in Fresno.

For now, let me just say I am still alive, and Happy New Year to all those Aussies who get to welcome 2007 a whole day before I do!