Sick for the Holidays: A Bummer of Monumental Proportions

I wish I could write that the reason I haven't posted anything recently is because I've been wallowing in holiday revelry. Nope. Sadly I've been too ill to even boot up my netbook.

This is the second time in my life I can remember being sick over Christmas. The first was decades ago. I was 14 or 15 and living in Louisville, Ky. It's the first time I've been sick since moving to South Carolina five years ago, and the sickest I've been in at least 15 years.

Today is the 27^th and I consumed my first food this morning since Christmas dinner. It consisted of two slices of Swedish rye bread toast. I only ate about half the amount of food -- turkey, chestnut dressing, Pennsylvania Dutch dried corn and so forth -- on Christmas day as I normally would.

I started coming down with whatever this is late Saturday afternoon -- three days before Christmas. I didn't realize, however, that I was getting sick. How can that be? you might ask. Here's the thing, I never feel great when I visit my sister in New Mexico in the winter. The combination of low humidity and the furnace drying things out even more really does a number on me. I almost always feel like I'm coming down with something by the second or third day of my stay.

Usually I have my own humidifier that I carry from room to room with me while I'm here.

I didn't think much about it on Saturday when I started feeling bad; it was just business as usual.

It wasn't until I woke up the next day feverish with a sore throat that I knew this wasn't just the usual New Mexico discomfort. Eventually, I was so sick that I couldn't sleep. Some antibiotics taken on Christmas Eve helped me rally enough to open gifts on Christmas morning and stay vertical long enough to eat some turkey, but by evening I was slipping fast.

I went back on the antibiotics on the 26^th and took a few other things my sister pulled out of her medicine cabinet that's stocked better than some small-town pharmacies. Last night I got something close to my first full night's sleep in four days.

Today I'm rebounding nicely. I feel pretty good. Although I ache all over from my coughing fits the past couple of days, otherwise I'm about 60 percent there.

I credit my flight out here with infecting me. If there was one kid there were 50 on that plane, at least half of them were sick. Then there was the guy sitting across the aisle from me who sneezed his way from Atlanta to Albuquerque.

Being flat on my back and not able to sleep has afforded me the time to finish two books since arriving. I just downloaded No. 3 this morning.

So far I've avoided getting any of the 20 or so people who have been in and out of this house in the past three days sick: somewhat of a miracle, I believe.