Chills
Though I was hardly thrilled when the doctor told me ten days ago that I have pleurisy, I did catch myself thinking, “Well, that’s a relief.” Better to be diagnosed with a “real” ailment than to feel as though I’d never shake the flu I contracted more than a month ago. And the word “pleurisy” has such romantic associations—it makes me feel that I should be taking a rest cure at a spa hotel in Marienbad (even though my only remaining symptom is a sharp pain at the top of my chest when I breathe in deeply).
My doctor wrote referrals for a blood count and a chest X-ray, just to be sure that pneumonia wasn’t lurking around. When I saw her again last Friday, she assured me that I was basically fine, that there was no point my taking the foul-tasting Senega & Ammonia cough mixture my mother had recommended, and that all I could do was to take it easy—that I’d gradually get better over the next couple of weeks. When I admitted I should have taken a week off as soon as I realized I was ill, instead of a just a couple of days, she said, “You were really sick. It can take four to six weeks to recover from this strain of viral influenza.”
My friend Karl, who is also a doctor, pointed out that I should have had a flu shot once the weather turned cold. I’m not against immunization but I’d wondered whether the prevention might be worse than the disease. Now I know better. Since there are no drugs I can take to speed my recovery, I thought about alternative remedies. A little Googling turned up Pleurisy Root (Asclepias tuberose) so I ordered some from a herbal dispensary in Tasmania (if it doesn’t work, I can get Allan Moult to go round and ask for my money back).
Unlike Karl or my GP, my mother holds to the belief that colds and influenza are always the result of “catching a chill” rather than from contact with an infectious person or object. I’m not convinced, but while lying in bed a few days ago, I gave some thought to any chill-inducing events that might have caused or exacerbated my flu and had no trouble coming up with seven: haircut, hat, ice-skating, pajamas, swimming, echinacea, and Windows XP.
I usually go to the barber every two or three weeks and always have the same haircut: #2 clippers all over, tapered—not shaved square—at the back, and an eyebrow trim. For some reason (perhaps I’d seen someone with really short hair in a movie) I decided to ask for the #1½ clippers, thinking they would leave my hair 25% shorter (six millimeters rather than the usual eight). But I walked out into the frosty autumn evening with hair four millimeters long—I measured it when I got home—wondering how I could have been so stupid.
I don’t often wear hats but even if I’d had a hat on this occasion it may not have protected me since hat etiquette would have prevented me from putting it on until I was outside the barber shop, by which time the chill might already have entered through my nearly bald head. On the other hand, if the effect of a chill is not instantaneous, a hat might have protected me during the five minute walk home. Since I like having short hair, even in winter, and I’m now anxious about catching another chill, I’ve started wearing a baseball cap or a woolen beanie whenever I go out. But as autumn turns into winter I’m thinking a hat with ear flaps might be better. This Mens hat with ear flaps made from shorn New Zealand possum fur looks good, though I don’t think I want to spend US$175. (I’m hoping our resident hat expert will offer an opinion as to the efficacy of hats as a protection against chills.)
I did wear my woolen beanie when I went ice-skating with my friend Nana and her niece, but it offered no protection from nine year old Mai who glided up behind me and tapped me on the arm, giving me such a surprise that lost my precarious balance and fell flat on my back. As I lay winded on the ice, with Nana and Mai looking anxious and everyone else skating nonchalantly around me, I could feel the cold seeping through sweater and T-shirt into my bones.
Sydney weather is mild enough for one to sleep in the nude so I haven’t worn pajamas since I was a teenager living in my parents house. But when the temperature dropped suddenly one night towards the end of March there may have been a chill hiding in a corner of my bedroom, waiting to pounce. Not wanting to take any more chances, I went to Gowings department store last Thursday to buy a pair of pajamas and was surprised to see an array of brightly patterned pajama bottoms. The lady in charge of the sleepwear department explained that lots of people don’t like pajama tops because the buttons are uncomfortable to lie on, so Gowings offers pajama bottoms that you can team with a loose T-shirt. “What a great idea,” I thought to myself, and bought a citrus-patterned pair to try. The pajama bottom & T-shirt combo works so well that I think I’ll buy another pair.
Perhaps I was foolish to go swimming just a week after I’d spent the weekend in bed, though when I called Dr Karl to check he assured me there’d be no problem. The pool certainly felt chilly when I dived in and there may have been more chills awaiting me on the walk home, particularly since at that point I hadn’t taken to wearing hats.
Maybe echinacea doesn’t work as I’d imagined, though I’ve taken it diligently for years—from the first to the tenth of each month and from the sixteenth to the twenty-fifth. The fact that I can’t recall the last serious cold or flu I had before this might simply be due to a placebo effect. In any case, it seems that echinacea is only really effective for relieving the symptoms once the cold or flu has started. I must be a sucker for natural remedies because I still have high hopes for the Pleurisy Root.
Deep down, however, I think Windows XP is to blame. I started feeling sick on March 31, a few days after going ice-skating, but it wasn’t until April 3 that I was able to spend a Saturday in bed. The following day, Sunday 4 April, I woke up and turned on my desktop computer to quickly check my email only to have Windows XP refuse to load because a system file was missing or corrupt. A chill went down my spine. Attempts to repair the installation failed. I’d have to reinstall. Mark Pilgrim might be able to reinstall Windows XP in five hours or less but, even though I had a Ghost image of Windows XP, in my weakened state it took me the best part of five days—the week I should have been resting in bed—to reinstall all my applications, troubleshoot various video driver, mouse, and hard drive problems, and carefully create full Ghost images so next time (hopefully) I can reinstall everything in five minutes. And there will be a next time. Windows applications are, by-and-large, excellent but the operating system itself is a joke. If there are, as Robert Scoble suggests, all these “smart people” working at Microsoft, why don’t they stop dreaming up unnecessary “cool new features” and turn their attention to fixing what doesn’t work?
Needless to say, this wretched affair—along with Gary Snyder’s paean to his Mac—has reignited my interest in buying a Macintosh. I’d be grateful if anyone who has firsthand experience of using Virtual PC could leave a comment. (Unfortunately Microsoft acquired Connectix so it’s now Microsoft Virtual PC: a 45-day trial version is available for Windows but—not surprisingly—there’s no trial Macintosh version.)
Anyway, to cut a long story short (as Halley Suitt recommends), I’m feeling a lot better now, having rested for much of the past week, thanks to an ingenious suggestion by Shelley Powers (which can be the subject of another post).
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