Great illness wave hits Da Nang

I bet it has happened to almost anyone in the world like this. One person gets sick, then the next thing you know a couple more of your friends are sick and it just seems to be going through everyone and try as you might to make it not get to you, it does eventually.

I tried really hard to stay away from sick people and even told them to NOT come to bowling if they are feeling ill. I stayed away from most people and just had a lot of home days with Nadi in the past week and yet, this seasonal illness made its way to me anyway.

I can normally sense these things coming. It will be a small thing like a bit of a stuffy nose when I wake up or just this kind of not so great feeling in the back of my throat. I can tell by what kind of bad feeling it is whether or not I just slept wrong or if it is a real and genuine illness.

When I have figured out that I am definitely going to be ill really soon i have on last weapon at my disposal and it has worked for me in the past. You gotta sweat out a cold and chase it away. This is an old wives' tale version of illness prevention but I swear it has worked for me before. I went running for an hour on the boardwalk and sweat a lot, I was moving for more than an hour and on the way back I stopped at a pharmacy for a bunch of things that I knew I would need if my precautions failed.

They failed, and the following day I was hit hard by a really bad head cold and flu-like symptoms.

my nose when it wasn't stuffed was runny, I feel achy and weak, I have no appetite, but the worst part is the sinus aspect behind my nose and mouth is kind of raw and scratchy. I dont' know how else to describe it. It's not painful yet and I hope it doesn't get to that point, but for now it just feels odd, annoying, and probably like it is surrounded by mucus.

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it's probably all of those things and also the starting point of the upper throat.

I am now on day 3 and day two was one of staying at home for the entire day, being full of medicine and basically being in a state of sleep or near sleep at all times. I only took Nadi on one walk but man, just regular movement seemed like a struggle to me.

I don't get sick often but when I do get sick, I tend to get severely sick. I also am not good at powering through when my sinuses are aching, which has been the main problem for me as far as all this is concerned. That and the perpetual weakness that makes little sense when you consider that yesterday, I probably was asleep for 16 out of 24 hours and of my 8 awake hours at least 5 of those was spent in a relaxed position.

So if the idea is to get as much rest as possible so the body can heal up, that is exactly what I am doing.

One thing that is more difficult to do over here in Vietnam is to self-medicate from over the counter medicines. Depending on the pharmacy, some of them want to give you drugs that are far too strong and you would need a prescription for in the west and other pharmacies are trying to give you bullshit herbs or some hippie crap like that rather than give you anything in between. I don't want the Hollywood script fix, but I also don't want the hippie remedy either. I want that good ol' American middle ground. I want NyQuil and tylenol and this can be tough to pull off over here.

I have a whole mess of pills in my medicine cabinet and since my eyesight is not great and I understand almost zero Vietnamese, all of my pills have some sort of code written on them. Those above are anti-histamine and they are not labeled as drowsy or non drowsy because there is a rule in my house, if it is a medication that I am buying and there is a drowsy version of it... i get the drowsy one.

I view sleeping when ill as a fast-forward button. The more you sleep the closer you are to getting over it.

Today is bowling day and it is "go time" in 2 hours from right now. I am going to go, I have to go, but I will advise everyone to stay kind of clear of me if they are worried about such things and under no circumstances are people to make out with me today, especially not the dudes. I'm just kidding, they don't do that with me. I'm just going to tell people to stay away.

Drinking alcohol is something that is always a part of my bowling days and sometimes that helps a cold get moving on in my world as well. We shall see. Now my bowling scores will probably be the best they have been in weeks because I am too ill feeling to care about trying!