- Excruciating headache.
- Violent diarrhea.
- Painful soar throat.
- Slight cough.
- Nonexistent balance.
- Hacking and sneezing.
The headache didn’t respond to any meds and lasted a good twenty four hours without abating. I was sure it was merely a part of the bloody brain norm. It didn’t occur to me that it might a symptom of a bug.
The diarrhea was clearly due to a bug, as was the soar throat. The slight coughing… probably another symptom, though possibly asthma.
I had no doubts about the loss of balance. I couldn’t even sit up without swaying—definitely the bloody brain at work. It often likes to flex its muscles when I’m under the weather, just to remind me that it’s there.
The next day, I started hacking and sneezing. Perhaps the bug felt it had to compete with the bloody brain for attention.
I used to wonder what was what. Was the fact that I couldn’t remember the storyline in a book I just finished due to the bloody brain, or due to normal memory loss associated with aging? Was my exhaustion at the end of the day just because I had a tough day at work, or was it the bloody brain related fatigue making a showing? Did my outlook on life change because of the physiological changes incurred by the surgeries, or due to the psychology of undergoing a life changing experience? Was my depression situational or biological?
Now, I usually don’t worry at categorizing whether something is due to the bloody brain or not.
It doesn’t matter what caused the depression. I’m depressed and am being treated for it, both with meds and with therapy. If a headache is the result of hormonal changes, or the bloody brain punishing me for overextending myself, I still have to deal with it the same way.
I don’t care why I don’t remember what happened in a book I read. It’s more important that I do tend to remember how enjoyable it was. And if I enjoyed reading it, my lousy memory allows me to reread it and enjoy it all over again—I’m lucky that way. It’s cheaper too.
Which reminds me, I’ve got a book on the back burner I remember enjoying and wanted to reread. Gotta go—so many more books, so little time.