Categories: swansea
Tags: Ill
Date: 05 October 2005 12:42:21
Almost everyone I know in Swansea has been ill over the past week. Freshers flu has hit hard this year. I've spent the last two days in bed. Normal cold-like symptons i can cope with, but this has been worse. I had a really bad headache, had absolutely no energy and slightly dizzy. If I got out of bed and did something vaguely energtic (like trying to get a DVD player to work) for about 15 minutes, I would then completely flake out, and need to sleep for an hour or two to recover. I've never felt like that before, and I don't think I ever want to again.
Today I am feeling better, though still not 100% (about 85%, i think). I decided to take a third day off work, to get myself back into normality again. i was determined not to spend another day in bed, so cleaned our bathroom this morning, now in uni checking emails, etc, but will spend the afternoon relaxing in the chaplaincy. I seem to have 4 mums at the moment, well, 1 real mum and 3 overprotective female friends. This is a good thing when you need to eat and don't have any energy to cook (thanks guys!), but can get slightly annoying when you have to promise each and every one of them that you won't do too much. I know they all do it because they want me to get better properly, but I do feel like a rebelious teenager sometimes.
Looking back over the past few days, when I've been in bed, I've realised that you can tell how ill i am depending on what music I'm listening to. On Monday afternoon I tried to listen to my new Eliza Carthy CD, but found it too much - it was too changeable for my half-asleep head to cope with. I listened to some very relaxing, easy listening music instead. But by Tuesday afternoon I could cope with Eliza Carthy (with the volume down). I saw this as sign that I was improving. This morning, I put on a general folkie album, and impressively could cope with the volume up slightly higher, but my head could still not cope with Oysterband - t'was too much! When i'm working in the hospital, we tell how ill people are by their pain feedback (in babies this tends to be high pitched screaming!) and medical observations like heart rate, respirations, temperature, etc. i think the alternative 'music scale' is much more fun!
Whiles being ill, I've made an exciting discovery. There are lots of colours I never realised exsisted before! At one point, when I was feeling the need to stimulate myself intellectually, I found a puzzle book. After a flick through, one puzzle called 'Rainbow' stuck out (I wonder why.....). It had a list of 35 names of colours and you had to fit them into the crossword-type grid correctly. I never knew there were so many different colours. Like 'Aal', 'Ecru', 'Capri' and 'Vermilion' - does anyone know what colour any of them are supposed to be? That discovery really was the high-point of the day. I sat up in bed, said 'ohh, wow' a few times and bounced around a little, then felt exhausted went back to sleep.