{"id":130,"date":"2011-10-10T12:27:41","date_gmt":"2011-10-10T20:27:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/paulkahl.com\/pkBlg\/?p=130"},"modified":"2011-10-10T12:27:41","modified_gmt":"2011-10-10T20:27:41","slug":"the-black-death","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/paulkahl.com\/pkBlg\/?p=130","title":{"rendered":"The Black Death"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I woke up Thursday last week, and thought to myself, &#8220;I shouldn&#8217;t go in today. I feel terrible.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>But I went in.<\/p>\n<p>Throughout the day, I gradually felt worse. My throat was killing me, I couldn&#8217;t swallow anything but the iciest of ice waters, and my breathing was slowly becoming more labored. By the time I got home, I&#8217;d made up my mind.<\/p>\n<p>I wasn&#8217;t going in Friday.<\/p>\n<p>I figured that if I took a day, and perhaps the weekend, I would be shiny and happy once again come Monday morning. Nothing could be further from the truth.<\/p>\n<p>Friday morning, I woke, groggy and hurting in every joint. I had spent the night mostly awake, sleeping in between involuntary swallows during the night. (The human type person swallows an awful lot of times during sleep &#8211; I know this now first-hand.) Swallowing hurt so much, it would awaken me, and I would lay there for 10-15 minutes, trying to pass back out once more. <\/p>\n<p>Repeat as needed.<\/p>\n<p>Friday, my sinuses decided to join the party. Breathing became more restricted, and my head felt like it wanted to spontaneously explode and implode. I faced the beast bravely all day. Well, ok, &#8216;bravely&#8217; might be a stretch. I faced it more like a frightened child. But I had my wife and puppies to help me through. Very supportive all around, but I was still feeling much like I assume ass would feel if it felt like ass.<\/p>\n<p>The weekend flowed very much the same. Hot sweats, cold sweats, coughing, sneezing, breathing through one nostril. You know the drill. Good Morning, America. Insert Plague symptoms here.<\/p>\n<p>Fast Forward to Monday (because the weekend was packed with ick): Symptoms should be reduced, right? I should be on the mend, right?<\/p>\n<p>Wrong.<\/p>\n<p>My taste buds are wonky. Egg dishes and soup currently are tasting great, but otherwise, I&#8217;m somewhat handicapped in the taste category. My body doesn&#8217;t know what time of day it is. I&#8217;m passing out when I should be awake, and bursting into wakefulness in the middle of the night.<\/p>\n<p>This plague should be over. I want this plague over. Now would be great. At this point, work tomorrow is out of the question. The next day? Up in the air.<\/p>\n<p>How do you end the flu? A flu shot is certainly not the answer.<\/p>\n<p>More soup, please.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I woke up Thursday last week, and thought to myself, &#8220;I shouldn&#8217;t go in today. I feel terrible.&#8221; But I went in. Throughout the day, I gradually felt worse. My throat was killing me, I couldn&#8217;t swallow anything but the &hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more\"> <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/paulkahl.com\/pkBlg\/?p=130\"> <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">The Black Death<\/span> Read More &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,1],"tags":[59,58,56,57],"class_list":["post-130","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bored","category-uncategorized","tag-evil-colds","tag-flu","tag-plague","tag-sickness"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/paulkahl.com\/pkBlg\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/paulkahl.com\/pkBlg\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/paulkahl.com\/pkBlg\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/paulkahl.com\/pkBlg\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/paulkahl.com\/pkBlg\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=130"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/paulkahl.com\/pkBlg\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/paulkahl.com\/pkBlg\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/paulkahl.com\/pkBlg\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/paulkahl.com\/pkBlg\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}