Chill (With Update!)

Yesterday, I noticed a chill.

This was not at all surprising, as the day was rainy and, well, chilly, and I was barefoot and wearing shorts and a t-shirt. Putting on a pair of jeans, socks, and an overshirt solved that toot-sweet.

Except that when I was driving to pick up Betty, I noticed that I was quite stiff between the shoulders and about the neck. I attributed this to my having spent the whole day hunched in front of a computer, and shrugged it off (so to speak).

But then this morning, having seen Freddie off to the schoolbus, and drinking my morning coffee and taking a quick jaunt around the blogs, that damned chill came back.

And this time, there was a component in the chill that felt quite unusual indeed, quite unhealthy. And the stiffness was back in the shoulders.

I went upstairs, dug out the thermometer.

100.3.

OK. Calm. Take a long, hot shower. Neck down a couple Tylenols. Think hard. You haven't been in Mexico, dumbshit.

Yes, but I was at the Smithsonian Museum of Art two days ago, killing time before picking up Betty. Plenty of opportunities to get into somebody's sneeze-space there. And the night before that, I'd been at a Leesburg emergency room for my slashed thumb, where a hysteric presented claiming swine-flu symptoms. Last week, I was at a doctor's office getting an infected cyst lanced... Plenty of sick folk in that waiting room...

Think harder...

Oh.

Idiot.

Tetanus shot.

They gave me a tetanus vaccination when I came in with the slashed digit. Absolutely standard operating procedure.

The stiffness in the shoulders? Perfectly accounted for. Chills and low-grade fever? I'm fighting (an extremely mild form of) tetanus, fer crissakes.

Still doesn't prevent me from taking to my bed and milking this for a little sympathy. Chicken soup on a tray, what have you. I deserve it.

Update (For Mom, if for nobody else): The symptoms worsened through the day. Fever rose, sinuses became impacted, chills and sweats. Finally, after having vomited in the parking lot at Freddie's soccer practice, I presented at the same ER I went to the other day. They took me in, slapped me on an IV for dehydration symptoms, and let me stew for a couple of hours. The temp (by now 102) gradually came down, and they released me at about 11PM. They tested me for both influenza and strep, both negative, and concluded that I had a bog-standard viral infection that would play itself out naturally.

Woke up this morning, temp absolutely spot-on at 98.8, stomach settled, chills gone.

And This Has Been My Swine-Flu-Scare, 2009 Edition!

(By the way, the doc liked my tetanus-shot diagnosis, but wouldn't commit to it; too many variables.)

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Don't want to jinx it, but there was some communication yesterday and the day before that made the employment picture a whole lot better. Like I say, I don't want to jinx it, but the dawn might just be breaking.