I WILL Beat This Thing

not actually me, as the hair is too dark and too straight when I'm too sick to straighten it, but you get the idea

My temperature was manageable all day, but tonight it's right back above 104 again. My dad says if it shoots up again tomorrow I need to take antibiotics and probably to get a chest Xray Friday morning. I will hope it is gone tomorrow. My dad could get away with giving me antibiotics earlier, but he's very conscientious and follows CDC recomendations on any given illness before giving antibiotics. Doctors worldwide need to follow the protocol if they don't wish to create antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria. With this particular strain of influenza or whatever it is, five nights of moderately high temperature has been determined to be a normal interval of illness. Once the fever reaches day six, it has exceeded its limits, and there is probably secondary bacterial infection. I would prefer that it go away, although taking a three or four pills a day is a minor inconvenience in the grand scheme of things.

Today's midterms were a minor inconvenince -- a mere blip on the radar screen. They tests were more or less as I would have written them had I been givn the privilege of creating examsfor the courses I'm taking. I studied all the right material. Actually I studied all the material, but I agree with what the professors chose for inclusion on the midterm exams.


Tomorrow early evening I have a dress rehearsal for the cello recital. My mom will show up too just in case I get sicker and she has to play for the recital. She doesn't need tobe there to play the music. She's probably played it all bfore, and she could have played it perfectly withou ever having seen it before, but if she's actually called into service, the cellist will feel more at ease knowing that she attended the rehearsal.

So I will sleep all day tomorrow, then play for the rehearsal. Then I'll sleep all day Friday, then play for the recital. Then I'll sleep all day Satruay and Sunday, and I'll hope I'm able to drag myself to classes on Monday.

This blog is ended. Go now in peace to love and serve the Lord and to sleep until your sleep is reclassified as hibernation.

Strep Invading the Dorm

I'd be willing to bet even without a culture that this is a strep-infected throat.

Just when we had most of the freshmen on our floor going to classes, there's now strep in the dorms. I'm telling the freshmen that they should probably reduce their studying for a day or two, but they really should not miss more than one day of class. Some of them think that because they have health center clearances to miss up to three days, that's a good idea. The health center clearances are worth less than the paper on which they're printed in that regard. Professors don't care about doctor's excuses for missing classes, and they slow done for no one's illness. It's excusable to miss class until one has been on antibiotics for 24 hours, but then the freshmen really need to be in class. If they just go to class and try to pay attention and take notes for the two to five hours of classes they have, that's worth more than six to twelve hours of trying to study and make sense of someone else's notes. If they have P.E. classes and attend with their doctor's excuses, they can sit through the class without participating in the activity and not have the nonactivity counted as absences because of doctors' excuses, or they can make up the P.E. class with one-page papers related to the course for each class missed. Physical activity classes should be the least of their worries.

The health center actually came to our dorm and did throat cultures on as many of us as they could corral in two hours because it was more efficient than bringing the entire population of the dorm into the health center. our floor isn't the most infested floor of the dorm, but neither are we the least infested. I knew I didn't have active strep throat but I could have been a carrier, so I let them swab my throat. Because of my health history, I was offered antibiotics in case I come down with symptoms after health center hours so that I don't have to wait ten hours before starting medication. I filled a prescription to have on hand, but as long as I'm healthy I won't take it. I will not contribute to creating an antibiotic-resistant strain of bacteria.

My mom says I write about the freshmen as though they are lab rats. The truth of the matter is that if I were not rodent phobic, I would probably prefer to deal with lab rats. I'm typing with headphones on so I will not hear the whining freshmen, who are most obnoxious when they're ill.

This blog is ended. Go now in peace to love and serve the Lord, and keep rodents and sick freshmen out of my proximity.