Under the Weather

While we're experiencing the best weather we've had here in Waterloo compared to the past few months, I managed to pick up some sort sickness. I'm not good on identifying sicknesses myself, so I just lump everything together as "I'm sick". Unfortunately, my sicknesses always follow a similar pattern. First, I start the process by waking up one morning with a terrible feeling in my throat (between the back of my nose and my throat, if that helps). It's slightly tender, and very dry. Shelley and I always refer to that as "wind tunnel".¹ Over the course of the day, my sickness starts affecting my head and overcoming all rational thought. The second stage comes in two flavours. Either the sickness will completely disappear the next morning, or it will be worse. Yesterday morning, I experienced the latter. The feeling was worse in my throat, and I hadn't slept the entire night. Now, the usual progression of sickness is that the sore throat gets worse, then I develop a hoarse cough, and finally it ends up further into my chest. This is typically where it ends. On many occasions it turns into some form of bronchitis, and on one occasion it got as bad as a light touch of pneumonia!² Today, the third day of my sickness, will hopefully be the last day I experience this lack of productive work. I always feel terrible after spending my time doing nothing useful. I would feel even more terrible if my sickness doesn't subside after making a conscious effort to rest and relax. I often attributed the progression of my sicknesses to "overdoing it", and I would really like R&R to be the simple answer that leads to a speedy recovery today. I have a ton of coding to do in order to whip my source back into shape! ¹This is because your breathing acts as a wind tunnel directing cold, dry air to the back of your throat.
²I actually contracted pneumonia during the SARS scare around here. It was not cool to be getting a chest x-ray when SARS was described as "pneumonia-like".