This is not the way I want to spend my week

I don't remember being this sick for a long long time.

It started with a tickle at the back of the throat. (I took my pi pa gao! But guess the following day that began under the scorching sun and ended in a bone-chilling rain didn't help matters much.)

Saturday night; a warm, uncomfortable pounding in the head. (Well, probably nothing the little white pills of Panadol extra can't cure.)

I must have aged a thousand years in one day. There was a wooden stiffness in my back where the muscles seem to have frozen up overnight so I walked slightly stooped. My bones as I leaned my weight on them felt anything but solid. The joints creaked as unoiled hinges would, ached as how I imagine arthritis must feel like. My throat, oh my throat, I wish it did not belong to me. Every swallow was a sharp knife jab. A coughing fit like many steel toothbrushes scrapping against raw flesh.

And the fever burned. Spiked out of control, up to 38.2 degrees. It would come down, slowly, with every 6-hourly dose of paracetamol but would as surely inch its way up again as the drug wears off. For 3 whole days, it'd cycle like this.

In the night, sleep did not come as it usually does for me. Every hour I'd wake, needing to pee from all the liquids I've been pouring through my system. Tossing and turning carefully not so much to find a comfortable position because there is none but in the hopes that there is one in which the body would not hurt so much.

The fever stopped coming back after the 3rd day, thankfully. But in its place was a headache which tortured with every turn of head, every cough, almost every movement. And a blocked nose which refused to clear. (Have you ever tried to breathe through your mouth as you eat?)

Day 5, I struggled back to work. Starting with dinner the night before, the body has refused to keep the food that I've painstakingly made myself swallow several mouthfuls of, down for more than a few minutes.

The little button nose has started to run now (which I think is slightly easier to handle than a blocked one). The cough is still there. But today's a big improvement. I still feel a little weak, tired. But most of the horrors of the cold is over I'm glad to say.