This week I'm suffering through a relatively 'mild' bout with the influenza of this Year 13. This bastard of a flu, this bitch of a grippe, is such a body-hammering Tyson of an illness that a 'mild' case can be summarized thus:
DAY ONE: Your bowels become a bowling alley in which liquid waste rolls up and down and up and down and up and down and...until the flu rams its fist down your throat and pulls your guts out through your mouth and your esophagus becomes a howitzer and you learn why it's called 'projectile' vomiting. An hour or two later, you find yourself on your knees before the toilet doing a passable imitation of the Ralph Steadman illustration on page 180 of the Vintage trade paperback edition (1989) of Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
DAY TWO: Whatever you ingest becomes another bowling ball rolling mercilessly down your large intestine to score a strike that sends diarrhea spraying out your anus like so many violently downed pins. You are dehydrated; your lips are chapped, the skin on your fingers begins to flake. You have so little energy that you can barely keep your head above the level of your shoulders while sitting in a chair. Walking is an exercise in zombie-imitation. Your tastebuds cease to function, and whatever you eat seems to consist of pressed paper and clay. Unsurprisingly, you have no appetite.
DAY THREE: Feeling much better, you wake to find that your energy and palate have been mostly restored overnight, but your bowling bowels still rumble with the distant artillery of internal farting. (And your muddled mind mixes metaphors (and apologizes alliteratively).) Diarrhea remains a problem, but seems to improve by evening. Dark brown poop soup no longer pours from your pucker whenever you sit on the face of the porcelain god.
One-liner: This disease is like Rabelais without the jokes. Get a fucking flu shot.
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