Uggghhh...

Several of my students have been out sick, so it was just a matter of time before I got it. I woke this morning feeling a little achy, and within two or three hours, I had a 103-degree fever. Advil and a lot of rest have that down to 101, but I'm still really tired. While there's no good time to get sick, this time is particularly bad. I have to get up at 4:00 AM tomorrow to fly to Great Bend, KS, where I will be the keynote speaker at a conference on Tuesday. Hopefully this is just a 24-hour thing, and I'll be okay by then, but I don't relish the thought of traveling while I'm still recovering from the flu. I'm sure my fellow passengers won't be terribly appreciative, either, though I shouldn't be contagious by tomorrow.

Great strides in modern medicine, but we are basically powerless to prevent the flu. The flu shots were given to most people here (although they were somewhat restricted, if you'll recall), but best I can tell they didn't make a difference. My daughter got the flu just a month or so after getting the shot. Ah well. We'll probably make the rounds with it again as my family infects each other one by one. I just hope it hasn't mutated to the point where I get it again by the time it comes back to me.

It's a shame I'm so exhausted when I get the flu. I typically write down any vivid dreams I have, since I figure that's good fodder for stories. The dreams I get when I have a fever are pretty darn interesting, but sadly I'm too wasted to try to write them down. I'm just left now with a feeling that I've lost something that could have been important. No chance of recovering those dreams now. I think it's interesting how your subconscious can talk to you through dreams. It makes me wonder if that's the exception to the non-verbalness of the "silent partner" that Kate Wilhelm wrote about. I do know that you can train your dreams (I used to be really good at that until the NASA job kept me from getting enough sleep to begin with), so that certainly supports her theory. Fascinating stuff!