Beech Tree News Network

I have not had a sore throat of this magnitude since I was a senior in high school, fifty years ago this spring.

When I went to the doctor, last Monday, I told the nurse practitioner I had Strep.  I would have bet the farm on it.  Good thing I didn’t, unless it had been the farm on Ashes Creek, where I lived as a child, and where I seemed to come down with Strep with the turning of every season.  That last case, the one when I was a senior, was so severe that my throat swelled nearly shut, and it hurt to swallow even my spit.  That’s how it felt last Monday, when I told the nurse practitioner I had Strep.

They swabbed my throat.  The swab was negative for Strep.  It was negative for Flu and Covid, as well.  They don’t test for Ebola at my doctor’s office—I asked.  I don’t know what I have, but I suspect it is a subvariant of the combination of the three—Flu, Covid and Strep—a wicked stepmother of a virus.

I have pretty much kept to myself all week, telling my daughter and her family not to come by, even talking to Garey from the other side of the room, which is a challenge, because he can’t hear, and my throat hurts too bad to raise my voice.  I haven’t let Brother Cat lie anywhere near my face, just in case I have Rabies.  In today’s microbial age of disease transfer from animal to human and vice versa, you can’t be too careful.

About midweek, I remembered the old adage, misery loves company, so I started working on our taxes, reasoning that I was already miserable and what better company than the miserable job of working on taxes.  It turns out, working on taxes causes even more misery when you are miserable to begin with.  I quickly understood why death and taxes are often uttered in the same breath, so I abandoned the idea of working on taxes, feeling as if I were already standing at death’s door.

If I could have gotten some uninterrupted sleep during this illness, it might not have been as lengthy as it has been.  Most nights, I lay there, propped up on a pillow, tissues in my right hand, cough drops in my left, with the week’s worries traversing my mind.  Things like, did I pay the water bill?  Did I put those towels in the dryer?  Will I get to see that last episode of Doc Martin before ACORN dispenses with it for good?  The word “boondoggle” came to mind for no apparent reason.  It’s a funny little word, entertaining the first few repetitions, not so much after it makes laps in your brain for fifteen minutes.  The Grammar Nazi showed up to remind me I need to tell my granddaughter the correct usage of the verb Is “gone” not “went.”  (She remarked in passing that she had went to the store.)  Example: I went to the store.  I had gone to the store many times before.  I know, I know, such a trivial thing in the grand scheme of things, but I just can’t seem to let things like that go, especially not when I’m in the throes of misery.

During the day, I mainly watch TV and read.  I started DAVID COPPERFIELD by Charles Dickens.  He called the book his favorite child.  Our family is planning a trip to London in July, and I plan to take one of those walking tours that takes you by where Dickens lived and wrote.  The book is nearly 900 pages, but what else do I have to do?  Yeah, I know those taxes won’t do themselves, but I narrowly avoided that cliff already.  No use testing fate.

Today is Saturday. I will complete my course of antibiotics tonight.  Tomorrow will be seven days since this all started.  I hope, as God did, that I will be able to rest and be done with it all.  My throat is not sore, I’m not coughing, and I actually slept last night.

Misery can keep her own company.