July 6, 2006
Pride, the flu, and Superman
So, once again, we'll play a little catch up. I'll be as succinct as only I can be.
I had an interesting perspective on Pride and its related events this year. Being in the Castro now, I'm in the heart of most all of the activity, and it's something to behold, that's for sure. Pink Saturday afternoon, I had a the crazy idea of doing a little shopping before the throngs appeared. Oh, and I renewed my SF Public Library card, yay. Then the evening came, then it went. It was fun. Had a blast.
The next day, I had a little bit of work to do, so I didn't go anywhere, and it's a good thing I didn't because that night, I was in bed sick with a fever. Where it came from I can only speculate.
Monday and Tuesday were stuck in bed with a fever of 102°F and 101.8°F, respectively. That sucked. I mean bad. At least I was at home, in my bed, with my TV and all that. I cleared out my TiVo and I slept a lot.
Wednesday morning, I woke up with no fever, but in its place, a sore throat. I've had sore throats before, and they're gone within a couple of days. I started gargling with warm salt water, loaded up on Vitamin C and green tea, and just waited for it to pass. Wednesday night was also the scheduled showing of Superman Returns in IMAX with the SF Moviebears. Don't get me started there. It's a thing I thought I could fall into easily, and boy was I wrong. How could someone so anti-social and hyper-anxious about group activities ever think that he could fit into a group as gregarious as the SF Moviebears? Don't get me wrong, I'm sure they're all very nice guys, it's just I'm not gregarious in any sense of the word, and frankly, the whole idea of outings like that scare the living shit out of me. Whatever. Not the point. The point is that the movie was broken (although I've heard otherwise since then), we were given a refund ticket, and the event was rescheduled for a week later.
Fast forward through the weekend spent in bed nursing my sore throat, to Monday afternoon. At H's demand, I scheduled a doctor's appointment to pick up some antibiotics. As of Monday, my throat was still raw, and every time I swallowed anything, it felt like razor blades scraping down my throat. Lovely. Tuesday, I was in and out of Kaiser (in a half hour!!) with prescriptions for penicillin and tylenol with codeine (the latter to ease the pain if necessary, which it is not, so they'll just sit around until some time when I really need to be knocked out). That's all I really wanted. I don't care if the doctor diagnosed me with strep, I just want the meds. At least now I'm no longer contagious.
Wednesday I called in sick again to rest some more and let the pills kick in. I was fine, but I thought that I might as well ride the strep wave as long as I could. I knew my boss would be all hypochondriacal about my sickness, so I called in and told her the doc's diagnosis and knew that she would prefer for me to stay home. Play the system.
Wednesday was also another visit to the clinic for a vaccine check up. When they weighed me...now, please, concentrate very hard and imagine my surprise, my utter shock and awe when I saw the digital readout stop at 206 lbs (93 kg or 14 stone). Can you picture how huge my eyes were? How I had to pick my mouth up off the floor? When I was first injected with the study drug on 19 June, just two weeks previous, I was 217 lbs. In two weeks, I lost 11 lbs, most likely due to my prolonged illness and liquid diet, but am I gonna argue? I thought my pants were a little loose in the tush.
That got me thinking that maybe, if I could last two weeks on liquids and such, how much longer could I last? I've only got six pounds to go until I break the 200-lb barrier. Another ten pounds or so...shit, I could probably do twenty more pounds by the end of July if I kept going. That would put me at 186 lbs. Shit, I haven't seen the 180s since probably the mid ’90s. The only trouble with this whole fucked scheme is that I'm fucking hungry!!!!!!! I wasn't trying to lose weight, and while it feels kinda good, I'm not eating only because my throat is sore. Shit, when it's better, I'll probably put it all back on again. So sad. I don't know how anorexics or bulemics do it. I love food too much, and I'm so damn hungry. I'm gonna take my own advice to the undernourished-by-choice and have a burger.
Wednesday night was also take two of Superman Returns in IMAX. After a few initial mishaps, it worked, and it was absolutely delightful. They picked a real fine replacement for the Man of Steel. Loved it. And Parker Posey was superb. She is so amazing.
And now we're all caught up.
