About twice a year, I get a sinus infection. I’m miserable for a few days, I spend a few days after that being full of mucus and sounding unpleasant, but then it’s over. I don’t know how many years I’ve been in this pattern, but it seems that the symptoms are getting harsher. My last sinus infection dragged on for almost 6 months. No joke. It was pretty low-grade for most of that time, for one month, I just had a headache every day. But it would occasionally spike into a severely sore throat or something like that for awhile.
Last Tuesday, I woke up and knew I was getting sick. By lunch time, my head was pounding with pressure and my joins hurt. By dinnertime, I felt nauseous and feverish. And by midnight, I was pretty sure that death was imminent. I have never believed you could die from sinus infection before, but as I lay on the sofa, freezing cold, every joint aching, my lower back in total agony, and with the kind of head pressure that I was convinced could cause brain damage, I was totally certain that forced to confront weeks of feeling this way, death would be preferable.
My toddler had gotten a milder version of this, a few friends I had seen camping had versions of it, so there’s something definitely going around out there. My guess is a nasty little rhinovirus, but who knows.
I hope you are all spared.
And I hope that my ability to fight these things off becomes more proportional, because it seems my immune system went to the nuclear option this time dragging me and my personal comfort along for the ride. Last time, it took forever to clean out the bugs, so it’s almost as if the performance evaluations were taken personally and there was some angry overcompensation going on this time. My immune system apparently can’t handle constructive criticism. I am putting that in it’s file.
I’m doing better now. I sound gross, but I feel mostly okay. I’m in the “how much tissue can I go through in a day” phase, but the good news is: I will live to see the next sinus infection.
