have been sick for days. The worst thing for me is to be sick. Sometimes I feel infinite, that there is so much of me, not just my body but in the depth of my vision, in the reach of my grasp, in the tiniest things I can hear, in all I understand and know and have learned and have forgotten. But then I get sick, and it reminds me that all I am is just a few parts, and those parts are not working.
It began in a dream. I had a dream several days ago that there was a growing pain in my throat, that collapsed me, that murdered me, that took my comfort and my poise and made me croak and itch in the space between my mouth and my ears. It was unbearable, but it was a dream, and I woke up healthy, feeling as clear and infinite and well as always, and I was grateful for my good body, my reliable, durable physical self, who woke up every day, taking its agility and ease of being for granted.
Then, a few days later, it began slowly. An itch in my throat, that kind that can usually be cleared, but this time would not. It stayed, stubbornly, and grew roots that spread deep into the pristine pink pearl lace caverns of my lungs. The roots curled up onto themselves for lack of space, filling up my lungs from the bottom, locking me outside my own chest. I coughed, and coughed and coughed but the roots were immobile. They stayed, gnarled and deep, choking my breath, just long enough for me to panic, and then allowing me to cough away a clearing, and grasp a tiny tendril of thin air, barely a moment from drowning me alive.
As much as I coughed, I couldn’t clear enough of an opening in my lungs to breathe comfortably. Every breath was a conscious and worried struggle, and my throat was red and raw and furious at my lungs for forcing it to ask for each inhalation. The red rawness of my throat grew out of the roots, like evil, roughly scarred branches, sprouting onto the roof of my mouth, swelling the ribs of it with a throbbing insistence, as if they were trying to break down the barrier between my nose and my mouth. The complex and fine arches above and behind my tongue became bloated and thick, as the hollows between my mouth and ears began to itch like they had been filled with steel wool and termites.
I was working on a cruise ship, and my cabin air was dry and crackling. The air conditioning had filtered all the moisture out of the air, and too much movement would cause tiny blue sparks to fly from my fingers. I also wore a seasickness patch behind my right ear, which sucked the water from my body like a parasite, leaving a nasty, copper taste on my coated and dry tongue. The patch also acted as a diuretic, so I could never drink enough water to compensate for the dryness. The infection had no way to leave my body because it could not be washed out. Each day I could barely stay upright for long enough to eat some salty soupy concoction from the ship’s galley.
Finally, I went to the doctor, who promptly removed the patch, then took lots of little samples from the inside of my face with long wooden swabs. I was given a bottle of antibiotics, and then an IV bag of cortisone and more antibiotics. I was so dehydrated that my veins were narrow and easily missed. The nurse jabbed and jabbed into my soft, still patient inner arm, and then moved to my harder, more suspicious hand, and dark blood spurted all over the hospital whites, blood that looked ill and dirty and dry, not wet and hot and alive like blood. After many, many painful, deep jabs, the nurse was able to find one vein that would cooperate and not collapse on her for long enough to feed it a tube. The watery bag was hung up next to me and drained slowly into my weak and withering body. I felt better instantly.
An inhaler was prescribed to dig out the roots that bound my lungs, and my voice was no longer a scraping shard of pottery against the inside of my neck, but a voice, still froggy and unclear but no longer tasting of blood and mucus. I coughed up many clearings, sometimes unstoppably, which was rude and caused concern amongst my dear friends, but made me glad, because it made me sure that the end of this illness was near. I was even able to perform two back to back shows, which were great, thanks to the fantastic audiences. It made me grateful, because I love to do my work, and I do it well and better than I ever have now, in sickness and in health.