Felled by flu and a serious omission

You’ve had the flu.

Notice that wasn’t phrased as a question.

Of course you’ve had a miserable case of flu, in some hideous form or other.

There are two automatic signs ...

One: Everyone seems thrilled when you’re sickeningly bathed in sweat, like a warm, giant sponge. You personally don’t even know what day it is, but everyone around you says: “Oh, thank heaven! The fever is broken.”

Two: Someone brings chicken soup. Hopefully it’s a few days later, or there’s going to be a dish called Chicken Nausea.

By now, you’ve probably guessed that I’ve been laid low myself.

Right this minute, in fact, although maybe we’re nearing the finish line.

It started when I felt a little dizzy last Friday, got considerably worse, and at the moment I’m still so weak that I needed help just arranging my laptop.

I actually thought I might faint a while ago, but a huge dose of orange juice mainlined enough sugar into my system that we can keep going here.

As I’m sure you know, the Catch-22 of fighting any kind of flu is that there’s a stretch where you just cannot eat.

Nope.

No way.

And that, of course, means you get weaker and weaker.

So you sleep.

Or maybe you can’t sleep, which seems impossible but, believe me, it can happen.

I’m not sure of exact days here, but one evening over the weekend I began to freeze — my legs in particular. And then I couldn’t keep them still.

I have no idea how I finally got to sleep that night.

Maybe it was sheer exhaustion from jerking my legs for so long that I conked out like a guy finishing a marathon.

I felt better the next morning. I moved to the living room recliner, feeling a little sunshine, and promptly fell back to sleep.

Apparently I slept most of 20 hours.

You already know this, because you’ve suffered it yourself somewhere along the line, but when you’re sick, days and hours and events are just a blur.

If you asked me to bet on which day I awoke in that awful pond of sweat, I’d only have a one-in-three shot at getting it right.

Look up the word “delirious” in the dictionary, and that awful blur is exactly what you’d find.

I’M NOT recounting my misery here for the sheer hell of it.

It’s not like I’m looking for sympathy — or trying to explain why today’s column isn’t a little more newsworthy.

No, actually this is a public service announcement.

See, I’m pretty sure I got sick because, through sheer laziness, I stopped taking my regular course of vitamins.

For quite a long time, I would lay out the little tablets to gobble down with tea and toast in the morning.

Everyone has a personal preference in the world of vitamins, but I’ve been pretty serious about daily doses of vitamins C, D and B-12, plus potassium and magnesium.

But then, for no good reason at all, I just seemed to forget about them.

I can’t even tell you why.

Throughout the misery of the last four or five days, though, whenever I could form a coherent thought...

It was a pledge to get back on my vitamins.

So there’s my public service announcement, which you’re free to ignore. And I’m obviously not a doctor, so do what’s best for you.

Except...

I promise you don’t want to feel like this.

•••

Steve Cameron is a columnist for The Press. A Brand New Day appears Wednesday through Saturday each week.

Email: scameron@cdapress.com.

Twitter: @BrandNewDayCDA