Sleeping sickness.

I was sick as a dog last week, coughed my way to a lone seat on the train coming back from New York, and it only got worse from there. I even stayed home sick one day - without having to use any sick time, which peeves me - but by the end of the day Thursday I was dragging. I made arrangements with my client to be available from home on Friday, but come Friday morning, even that wasn't an option. In addition to the cold that had exploded in my system, nose stopped up, throat raw, and coughing continuously, suddenly Friday morning I found mucus coming out of my eyeball. I know, it's gross, reading about it can't be worse than seeing it, particularly when you're seeing it come out of your own eyeball. A quick google search found conjunctivitis as the most likely cause, especially as preceeded by a sinus condition, such as a cold.

That's right, I had pink eye.

It was 6 o'clock in the morning when I woke up to this mess, and I couldn't call my doctor until after 9am. It was a miserable three hours spent carefully wiping my eye with cotton balls, washing my hands, and calling Momola to yell at her for giving me the grossness. (Note: that's not actually confirmed, but it turns out two people in her office floor were contaminated, and she saw them more than I, and the day before I had noted her red eyes. Also, I didn't actually yell, I merely guilted her into packing up and heading for the doctor herself.) I finally got in touch with my doctor's office and made an appointment, which required I rol into sweatpants, and a hat (bed head only affects me when I want to leave the house without showering) and head for the bus - I'm sure the folks on the bus were pumped to see me, coughing and blowing my nose, with one eye red, puffy, and half-closed.

My doctor is a taciturn man, whose occasional attempts at humor are those you'd expect from a doctor, "oh, you work for the government, you could tell me, but then you'd have to kill me, eh?" Except imagine that in a toneless deadpan. He seems generally unimpressed with any attempts for the patient to demonstrate knowledge - as he told me how to care for my eyes as if I were a small child I stepped in and told him I had been doing just as he said, and he just looked at me for a moment before continuing as if I hadn't interrupted. Don't get me wrong, he's a nice guy, just a little short on the people skills. It actually freaks me out less than the doctors who are overly cheerful. I walked away with a prescription for eye drops and an admonition that I was highly contagious for 5 days and told to stay away from the general population. I got back on the bus and headed to Target, where I was told that they didn't have my eye drops in stock. Thinking that if I had to get back on the bus and go to the hospital pharmacy I'd be really annoyed (and already annoyed that I was going to be housebound for 5 days) I headed to the worst CVS ever. They had the eye drops... and every crying baby for a mile around. Here I am feeling awful for standing within six feet of any small person and risking passing the pink eye around, and these mothers keep crowding closer to me in line, cause it's a good idea to stand closer to someone whose eye is slowly closing. While the prescription was being filled, I headed back to Target to stock up on amusement for the next five days.
I acquired:

• new holiday pajamas (complete with holly berries)
• a penguin t-shirt
• a new wrap sweater that I never did get to wear, because they've turned the heat on in my apartment, oh, but it's wonderful
• penguin underpants (they came in a trio with holiday ornament underpants!)
• Arrested Development Season 2
• cold drugs (because when I cave, I cave absolutely)
• enough food to tide me over until the next day's Peapod delivery

And so I've spent the past five days at home, and until today, sleeping. We're talking all but six hours of the day sleeping, and they weren't consecutive. Even yesterday I was afraid that going back to work on Wednesday would be rough, but today I have been awake all day, nap-free! I put up and decorated my Christmas tree (penguins!) , wrapped some presents, did some online Christmas shopping, and even did some laundry - yay, me! I'm sure a full day tomorrow is going to wreck me, but I'm really excited about leaving the house tomorrow!

Oh yeah, and there are pictures of the tree - I'll post them later.