This was supposed to be Pajama Week at Local Dilettante Studio.  Instead I’ve been swimming in my own fluids for ten days.  Warning: bodily functions to be reviewed.

I squelched a sore throat shortly after New Years and was still congratulating myself when some unforgivably rude, over-achieving bacteria got into my left eye.  I awoke one morning to something dark and heavy above a weeping left eye.  I discovered, to my horror, that it was an eyelid swollen over my eye like an awning. My eye was swimming in red fluid. I looked like Igor.

At my eye doctor who I adore, (Scott Jamieson, Roosevelt Visions Clinic) the first thing I said was, “I’d better be getting an eye patch out of this.”

“I thought your hump was on the other side,” he said.

Dr. Jamieson (notice it’s not spelled like the Irish whiskey) fixed me up with an anti-biotic drop and did his (well-rehearsed) imitation of someone who immediately blinks the drops down the cheeks.  I went home with my Dr. Pepper schedule of drops: 10-2-4.  Sort of.

A day later the bacteria migrated to the right eye.  At four o’clock one morning both eyes were swollen, red, and oozing something disgusting.  I have never seen anything so frightening in the mirror, and that includes all the times I’ve seen my mother.

Then the sore throat roared back.  Every time I swallowed it felt like butcher knives were cutting into me.  I developed a little row of sagebrush far back on the tongue.  It alternated between scratching me and hanging halfway down my throat, threatening to jump but never leaving the ledge.  It was the sagebrush that finally got me to Urgent Care where an exam revealed that I did not have strep but I had the worst case of conjunctivitis the doc had seen in a long time.  And this was at the point when first eye was almost clear and the second eye about 75% improved.  I was so proud.  I never did find out what the sagebrush was all about and it eventually went away.

As the anti-biotic cleared up the eyes, the sore throat was reduced to feeling like paring knives were stabbing at me when I swallowed. At this writing I’d say it is down to one butter knife.

The week is a blur of watching Perry Mason and Leave it to Beaver episodes (on my firm conviction that watching TV shows from the 1960s is part of healing), reading books about the French Resistance, waiting for my friend Nancy to make a Lexulous move, waiting for the mail (I ordered stuff like a QFC addict), playing Free Cell, dropping a soup spoon down the garbage disposal, curling up with the cats, hot toddies, tea, herbal drops, French green clay throat poultices, steam, salt water gargles, and my friends:

Nina brought me Pho.

Susan brought tea, yoghurt and ice cream

Another Susan took me to Urgent Care.

Eileen brought reading material and mailed my quarterly taxes.  I also have her to thank for the idea of pureed carrots and cauliflower because they constituted about the only vegetables I’ve had all week.

The Gwen opened every other night especially for me to come over and watch episodes of Miranda.

Numerous other friends are still on my call list. Hmm. When I review the week in the light of all the love, it was better than Pajama Week.