A little-known fact about me amongst my more recent friends is that I have a nickname at home. It's Piglet, or simply, Pig. If you switch on our Wii Sports player, and play a game of, say, baseball, a team will come rushing out onto the pitch with spookily familiar faces. There's Tom, the comic version, with a heavy beard and thick glasses, our friend Abigail with big blue eyes and yellow hair, my mum in a bat-wielding pose never before seen, and then there's me. My name flashes up as Pig, and I sport glasses just as thick as Tom's and a haircut chosen pre-chemo. The 'Pig' title always gives me a little start, seeming somehow rude, but I've never changed it. And now that a short, rather squat 'Fred' has joined the team, I'm realising that minimalist nomenclature is the order of the day.
So Pig I am, and rather spacey today with it. In fact, not to put too fine a point on it, I'm suffering from Pig Flu right now. Or swine flu, if you will. Freddie had it last week and is right as rain now, whereas I'm not faring quite so well. Which is down to my immune system not quite recovered from that dratted chemo last year, according to the doctor. And I honestly thought I was fit as a fiddle and robust as the next person. Never mind. You might well ask how ill I can be if I'm sitting writing at my computer, but I say to you: if you've spent several days in bed with a nasty temperature, sweating like a, well, pig, running to the loo, and nursing aching bones in lukewarm water in the bath, you feel like doing something different to see if it will help. So here I am, 64 Zoo Lane on in the background (though Freddie's not actually watching it. He's in the garden playing football with a valiant Tom. More on Tom later), writing.
Well, here you have it. To all those who say the swine flu thing is a storm about nothing, and that it's no more than a nasty cold and that people should stop being melodramatic about it: Stuff off! Perhaps because of my fragile immunity, I've been dealt a big dose of the flu, and dealt it good. If you count making an imprint in sweat of your body on the sofa after frantic attempts with paracetamol, head coolers etc to get your temperature down from 38.6, doing a fart and then realising it was actually diahorrhea in your pants (sorry, but perhaps the nitty gritty will get the point across!), being so blocked up by night there is no way you're going to sleep unless sitting bolt upright (if you could just knock that temperature on the head), a hacking chesty cough that hurts every time, achey limbs and a mysterious tingling sensation in your fingers and toes as 'just a cold', then please don't come into work with a 'cold' anywhere near any establishment I'm ever associated with! It is utterly miserable, make no mistake. Not to mention sitting slumped on the pavement outside the out-of-hours doctors, head resting against the wall, waiting till I could be directed to a special room with a masked, gloved-up doctor in it so I can be checked out and given Tamiflu. All in all, a simply swell experience, I'm sure. And nothing to make a fuss about. Oh no!
Now Tom, as of this morning, has also come down with it. Would you believe it?! I suppose not that unlikely, considering. Just very unfortunate. The football game just now (ended just now due to rain) was a first attempt at entertaining Freddie with something other than the tv. Because, believe me, you don't feel like doing anything else when you've got this horrible lurgy. But Tom's done SO well. I couldn't even handle lying across the sofa with Freddie and had to go to bed today. So, thank you, Tom. You're a star!
I need to see to Tom's Tamiflu. Slight hitch on our 'flu friends' front, so an email needs to be sent to fix up someone else!
Good bye for now, from the Hogs of Sherlock Road.
xxxxx
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