I'm meeeelting

Many years ago my talented doctor Father saved somebody's life. Presumably doctors do this all the time, I don't know, but in this case it was quite something as the guy happened to be a friend of the family who had been over for dinner that night. He had left dinner early, feeling a bit poorly, and gone home. Later that night another fellow happened to drop past this guy's house and found him rather ill. Being (again) another family friend this guy called my parents. So my Pa trotted over there to check him out, was mildly worried and said something along the lines of it probably just being a bad cold but just to be on the ultra safe side he should go to hospital. As it turns out it was meningococcal and had the guy not gone to hospital he would have died.

I tell this story now not to talk up my Dad but to mention the fact that this little incident has made my life hell. By which I mean that every time I come down with a cold I believe I am on my deathbed.

Yes today I am home sick and it is my first sick day in... I can't even remember how long. I hate taking sick days - I always feel really guilty like I'm faking it, I always feel too rubbish to do anything anyway and it just means more work when I get back into the office.

Even so this one is particularly bad because I've got an achy cold that makes me feel super sorry for myself AND as though I'm not long for this world. Tingles up the arm? Oh I'm having a heart attack. Aching joints? Bloody meningococcal again.

To top it all off I don't even have a sympathetic parent floating about the house administering medicine and baked goods. All I have is an outwardly sympathetic boyfriend who has, it must be said, currently fucked off to buy bike parts.

Put a fork in me, kids, I'm done.

DEATH WATCH UPDATE THE FIRST: It is about oooh an hour and a half since the boy left with a promise to fetch me some drugs, a newspaper etc. Still he has not returned. Fearing the worst I call his mobile, wondering if I will be able to break up with him if he's been hideously disfigured and not be shunned everymore by society. He is well. He is alive. He is also at work. He forgot.

DEATH WATCH UPDATE THE SECOND: The time is approximately 2pm. I look at the cold and flu tablets to figure out when I can take another one and what do I discover? They are herbal pieces of shit with not a hard drug in there. Fuck me.