5/7/03

I am sick. I rarely get sick, and when I do, the worst of it is usually over in a day or two, but now, I'm on day 3, with no sign of improvement.

My throat is killing me. After waking up every twenty minutes in agony last night, I actually broke down and went to student health this morning. The nurse told me that my throat didn't look bad at all to her, but she gave me some anesthetic throat lozenges anyway. I tried one, and it only made my tongue numb. I am glad I didn't have to pay anything for them.

I think I got sick from overwork and undersleep. Since getting sick, though, I have done little other than to loll around, subsisting on a diet of tea, popsicles and plain tortillas. Occasionally, I will rub my sinuses or feel the swollen lymph nodes in my neck just to affirm to myself how very sick I am. Looking in the mirror or trying to talk has the same effect.

I have been drinking so much tea with honey and lemon that I ran out of lemon juice. I was too miserable to go all the way to the real grocery store, so I bought some from the little freakishly cheap produce market around the corner from my house. The brand of lemon juice was not one I'd heard of before, but I find the label on the bottle to be weirdly enticing: