illness
I had the thought the other day that my immune system is a mere façade of an army, all straw men and cardboard cutouts of tanks and self-propelled guns made of papier mâché and old bicycle tires, and the few T-cells I do have are quivering cowards who turn and flee, screaming, at the first sight of trouble. I suppose it’s natural to have thoughts like these after hours of feverish tossing, no longer able to tell if your teeth are clenched because each individual one is throbbing with sinus pain. After all, if you hadn’t been able to sleep a wink all night you might also conclude that the bodily systems you relied on to get you through your day are all staffed by turncoats and quislings. I don’t get sick often, but when I do, I go down hard, suddenly and without warning.
I’d gone through the morning with only a single sneeze, which I’d attributed to dust in the building ducts. I sneezed three more times after lunch; by three o’clock my sinuses started acting up and my eyes started to itch; by close of business I had gone through half a box of tissues and could barely see straight. I staggered home and crawled immediately into bed, trusting my body to know what it was doing and to put me quickly into a coma so that I could wake up the next morning, completely recharged. I woke up around nine or so, and by six the next morning, having not slept a single minute throughout the night, I decided it would probably be a good idea to take the day off of work. I felt more than a little betrayed.
It was some time during the long hours of delirium on my sick day that I realized that it was not so much that my defenses were weak, but rather that I have some of the most bloodthirsty lymphocytes around. Really, I don’t get sick often, and I imagine it’s because I have such a kick ass immune system that most germs would just as soon lurk someplace else. Ruthless, efficient, and avid students of military history all, I believe my cells grew weary of having no worthy foes to fight and so, employing a strategy used to devastating effect by Hannibal of Carthage, presented a weak front line to their impulsive foe, allowing them to recklessly advance until they were completely surrounded before the slaughter began. Gleefully swinging molecule sized spears and claymores, chanting battle songs coded in long chains of RNA, my body’s systems fought the battle they had longed for and turned the tide. Most of my symptoms were disappearing before noon the next day. Of course, as the battlefield, I get trampled no matter what. It would take most of another day before I felt like doing more than laying on the couch.
***
Aided with a hefty dose of TheraFlu I was able to finally, finally sleep the next night. Predictably I found my sleep to be wound around with a heavy dose of fever dreams. I have long been a lucid dreamer, but wrapped in the unusual intensity of it all I quickly forgot about this, hurrying through a city which I think was supposed to be Los Angeles, thoroughly lost and trying to make it in time to some undefined appointment where I was most urgently required. At last I came to some cliffs that reminded me of those at the sea’s edge in Point Loma. Often when I am awake I will suddenly remember snatches of dreams, and sometimes when I am in dreams I will suddenly remember bits and pieces of being awake. Standing there on the cliff and looking down at the waves beating against their base, I thought of how I’d sat in the coffee shop of a bookstore not too terribly long ago with two friends, and we’d brought up how difficult it was to fly for any distance in dreams, and in a flash of creativity that traced itself back to long training as an engineer, I thought more surface area is the answer. no wonder I’m never able to get enough lift. With the solution in the forefront of my mind, I tossed myself off the cliff towards the water below. Drifting down slowly, leaf-like, I had plenty of time to stretch my arms out and sprout wings from my finger tips. I watched the lazy gulls to see where the thermals were, and soared above the waves and along the cliffs in the California sunshine.
Before too long I decided I must be near my destination, and sailed back up to the cliff tops, hands and fingers abruptly resuming their normal form. I walked right off the coast and directly into Chinatown, reasonably on time for my appointment, which probably had something to do with submitting my Spanish homework. Hey, it’s a dream. It doesn’t have to make sense.
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