It is difficult to be inspired when you live in a hole, and when your brain fluids have been boiling under your temples for three days. I look out the window and feel little sparks of “create everywhere, redeem everything, and be a fool!” And I stand motionless looking out into the rain, which is awful weather for someone recovering from a fever. So I will stay in my hole. I call my room a hole because there is a mere foot remaining on the left side and head of the single bed, which is just long enough to hold my panting, wheezing, shivering body. But there are three very good reasons why I like this room. Its clean, its away from the street, and it only costs 120 rupees. I’m just glad I’m not living under a tarp next to a latrine right now.
It has been a long time since I’ve been sick enough worthy to say “I’m sick.” A cold isn’t a real illness if it doesn’t stop me from doing what I want to do, nor is diarrhea, or a headach, and so on. But from now on I will always feel sympathy for someone with a fever, especially if they don’t have proper medication. Its a waiting game of sleepless pain. And I continue to wait, and today will hunt down a painkiller that actually works and doesn’t have caffeine in it. And I’d like to get a long sleeve shirt to keep me warm.
Getting a draft when you have a fever is an uncomfortable feeling. Fans and air conditioners are like enemies. Each time I entered the hospital I had a hatred for them, and I couldn’t get my flickering eyes off of them. After my check-up I wanted to run from the cold doctor’s office. “Pay attention.” He says. And repeats himself slowly, tapping on his shitty handwriting. “You need to take this one three times a day, and this one once a day, for…” He was hugely overestimating my coherence. When I finished the blood test (I didn‘t have malaria!), and got out of the hospital, I wished his notes were clearer. Thankfully the pharmacist helped remind me.