Suppose I were to be seized in some dreadful way and unable to ring the bell?

To use the parlance of the locals in the Town, I've been wicked sick. Or at least my roommates think so. In fact one of them thinks I'm on death's door; and, I'll admit, I did on the first day of my illness tell someone I felt like death. But that was nearly two weeks ago. In the meantime, I've been heading out to work and school and riding the bus and T and coughing merrily all the way. I'm not trying to get anyone else sick, I'm just trying to do all the things I have to do.

I have to say, this has been a pretty interesting convalescence because it took me a long time to figure out what I was suffering from. There was some speculation it might be the flu because at first I was headachy and feverish with chills, slept nearly 12 hours every night, and, as mentioned earlier, felt more or less like death. But that subsided after the first couple of days and settled into more distinctly cold-like symptoms with a nice little wracking cough that sounds more or less like consumption. But as it's persisted longer than the usual one-week-run it's developed some peculiarities.

My lungs have been particularly touchy throughout this bout of illness; there's been a good deal of wheezing and difficulty of breathing and what not. I know because I've been paying close attention to them after being informed my teacher was in the grips of walking pneumonia. But I honestly didn't take too much worry over my lung's persnicketyness until the end of last week. As I hiked up the hill. I quickly discovered that I could scarcely breathe I'd been seized by such a terrible coughing fit. That, given the state of my cold, wasn't too unexpected. But the next morning I noticed that even as I trundled off to the T with a nice 10 minute walk in the crispy cold my lungs were perfectly happy. "Well," I thought to myself, "it's just a sign that I'm getting better." All was well. But that night it happened again, and I wasn't going up hill I was coming down. I soon noticed, that no matter how dry and cold the air was during the day my lungs were perfectly happy; they were similarly content at night when I was tucked away in my office or school or house. But no sooner had I stepped out into the nighttime air, then my lungs became agitated and upset. It was the perils of the night air.

That should have been my first sign.

But the confirmation came yesterday. I had a bit of a relapse and after a night with NyQuil, some morning Mucinex, and two extra-strength fast acting Tylenol (my drug of choice)taken a half-hour apart around 4:30 to mitigate a rip roaring headache, I was sitting semi-comatose in my office with a still-splitting head. And this was after I'd gone to the Conference Room and taken a much needed nap. Finally I mustered the resolve to brave the cold and wind and shambled off to the bus stop around 7:00. As soon as I stumbled into the house I called my trusty pharmacist/nurse/mother and asked if I could take some more of my favorite painkiller because I had some school work that still needed doing. The verdict: no dice, but if I could lay my hand on an alternate painkiller that might be okay. I tore apart my pantry shelf, looked in my medicine stash, and, after calling my roommate, looked in my roommates' medicine stash, but lo and behold no ibuprofen was to be found. But my head was still throbbing so, I dropped Punkzilla into my DVD player, turned off the lights, and lay back on the couch with a cold compress over my eyes. Much to my surprise, it did what two different kinds of medicine hadn't been able to. After a half hour or so the swelling in my sinuses had gone down and the headache had abated.

And that was when I knew.

I don't have the flu or pneumonia or what have you because I'm not just sick, I'm sick in 1815. I clearly have a Regency Cold. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go check if my eyes are overbright. I have a sneaking suspicion they might be. But I'm putting it in print here and now that I'm refusing leeches and there is to be no bleeding.