Still sick, but different

So I am still sick, but it's different from what is was yesterday, or Sunday, or this morning even.

Sunday it started out as a sore throat, moving up into my sinuses overnight. Yesterday I would have sworn it was an allergy, based on how I felt Sunday night and most of Monday. Monday afternoon I had one of my cold-ish symptoms - alternating nausea and hunger. This morning I felt fine, and figured a bracing hour-and-twenty-minute walk in sub-freezing temperatures would help clear my sinuses. Today it feels more like a cold, complete with coughing, sneezing, and runny nose.

(This morning there was one other symptom: sloppier writing than usual. In this morning's blog entry I made at least three major errors - I referred to Sunday as Monday, I forgot to paste in the link to the page on Auroras, and I mentioned how the "reflection" of streetlights was "reflecting" off snowflakes. I have corrected these three errors, but how many more did I miss? And how many more have I made in this entry?)

The Hot Zone is Richard Preston's "Terrifying True Story" of the Ebola virus, a nasty bugger of a disease that makes the terrible mistake (from a Selfish Gene point of view) of killing its hosts. But before they die - and as they die - they go through a series of stages that help to spread the disease: bleeding from every orifice, massive convulsions, and a few others I don't remember (it's been years since I read the book.)

Like Ebola, most other diseases go through several stages in the human body. It's interesting to have a garden-variety (I hope) illness and sit back and try to observe its progress as it races through your body, working through its life cycle and doing its damnedest to propagate itself to other hosts. If your eyes burn, how long do they burn? If your skin gets sensitive, when does that happen, and how long does it last? Dizziness? Coughing? What order does it all come in? When will the disease have run its course?

In a few minutes I will change my clothes, brush my teeth, wash up, pop some antihistamines, and go to bed. In the morning (God willing) I will wake up to a whole new set of symptoms. Something to look forward to, I suppose...