This Is Sick

It starts with an odd, dry, ticking sensation in your throat, that proceeds to a harsher, dryer, discomfort.


Sort of like a sharp instrument stuck there, and pointing at all sides of your throat.

After coughing a dry cough, for a day or two, the real deal-breaker comes in.

The flem.

It gathers in your throat, and it can either go up or down.

In front of people, you literally have to close your eyes and swallow, take in the slug, and pray it doesn't come back. But in the comfort of your own privacy, you hack and cough and try to get all the shit out, the shit that keeps blocking your throat (and hey now it's getting into your nose, too), but it is relentless and this incredible amount of flem just keeps coming back.

You cough and cough. You don't know why you cough anymore, it almost becomes a habit, getting air out, something out. When you cough it starts to hurt, your lungs heave, your whole chest and rib-cage area are stirred and pressured to an extent that makes you cringe everytime your mouth makes that convulsive "o" shape.

The coughing alternates. Sometimes it's a disgustingly, flem-induced cough, which does nothing more than push the flem that is deep down, stuck in the middle-of-nowhere land right up into your throat.

Again, if in front of people, all you can do is try and keep down this disgusting goo. Your voice is affected: it is scratchy, hoarse, infected and all you can do is pat your chest and keep on coughing.

The other type of cough is the dry, stabbing cough, where you feel the burn as if you are experiencing the driest desert in your mouth, and simultaneously a desert that is filled with knife-wielding men. Now you realise that the sharp instrument in your throat is in fact a cheese grater. You try and swallow (because with this cough, you want to) and fill up your throat with any kind of moisture you can gather, but to no avail. Because you will get better when you are better, and no amount of swallowing, hacking or coughing will do anything to help the cause.

To screw things up even more, just when you think things are getting more bearable, the slightest turn, nod or shake fills your head with such a deep, throbbing intense ache that even lying down doesn't help. It only changes the ache to throb at a horizontal level.

Your head aches when you're in the cold. It aches when you move. It aches most probably because you're not drinking enough water, and you're not drinking water because you'd rather have hot drinks to soothe your damaged, stressed-out throat. Hence the paradox in the situation.

Did I mention the voice? Part drag-queen/whisper/baby/50s sultry screen siren/hormonal teenage boy? Got all that? Yeah, good.

It's so entertaining having your voice break and change in so many levels just in the one sentence.

Halfway through your ill-induced consciousness now known as the only life you know, you actually lose your voice. All that can come out is a raspy, breathy gasp, if that. You think of what your weird hybrid of a voice was previous to this, and ask yourself the question, which would I prefer.... no voice or deformed voice?

Before you have much time to ponder the endless advantages of either option, the drag queen is back.

So all you do is wait for it to be over.

Or get meds from the doctor which is what I did 2 days ago....

Ahh, winter. No other season screws you like this.