The Flying, Fickle Finger of Fate

It's been a weird few days.

I mentioned before that Wonderful Wife and I have been enjoying the pleasant fall weather by getting out for longer and longer walks to build my stamina. On Thursday we went to our favorite place: Mass Audubon's Ipswich River Sanctuary. I had in mind a walk along a longer trail that we had only done once before. I felt plenty strong enough to do it. I mapped it just now and it is just under three miles.

I felt fine during the walk/hike. I was feeling a little tired by the time we got back to the car. But soon after we got home I felt completely exhausted. Painfully exhausted, in fact, all afternoon and evening.

Friday I woke up still pretty exhausted. I spent the entire day resting.

Every night for the past several weeks my sleep has been interrupted many times per night by drainage from my sinus infection. I finished the most recent course of antibiotics on Friday. I was expecting at least a temporary decrease in symptoms, but Friday night I had the opposite. The drainage started making its way toward my lungs and causing a deeper cough.

Not a good sign.

I managed to make it all the way through treatment without aspirating any mucous and now it's going to get into my lungs?

Yesterday I felt really horrible all day. It seemed clear that I had a cold or flu. The prospect of feeling miserable for several days through a cold or flu was really depressing. Especially given that I was expecting to feel better as the sinus infection at least decreased.

Then in the afternoon and evening I developed a fever. It got to 102 at one point. I was curled up in a ball. I am so tired of feeling crappy.

I dread the nights anyway these days because of the crappy sleep, but I was really dreading last night with a fever and cough and body aches.

I took some ibuprofen and tussin (loosens the mucous) before bed and, surprisingly, had a "normal" night by recent standards. I still woke up several times to get rid of mucous, but I didn't feel especially bad and I went back to sleep every time. I even slept until 8am, which is later than I've been able to sleep lately.

Today I feel tired and weak, but the body aches and fever are gone. Mucous production is way up, though.

Very weird. I never know what my body is going to do next.

I started the day with some oatmeal but it tasted very bad due to the sinus discharge. So I'm back to tube feeding for a day or two. I got in very few calories yesterday but I'm trying to get back on target today.