Every day, in every way, I'm getting better and better

The benefit of being ill is how wonderful it feels to get better. It's not quite enough of a benefit to make anyone wish for illness, but this is a case of counting your blessings. Just as warm and sunmy days are much more appreciated after a stretch of autumn weather than in a permamently sunny climate, so having been ill generates a positive feeling of wellness afterwards, at least for a short while.

I confess that illness in general does not bring out the best in me. I am not a good patient (too self-pitying) and worse, I am a very bad nurse (way too impatient). Character flaws, for sure. For me, illness almost always takes the form of bouts of (high) fever, caused by throat infections (I went through a lot of those as a child) or, as in this case, a common cold. I'm very happy that I am mostly spared symptoms like nausea, which can be much more debilitating than fever, however high. At its peak you just float somewhere, not quite aware of the world around you. Strangely obsessed dreams revolving around some random small event that lasts all night. This time it was actually not so bad; not having a thermometer at hand I can't really say, but at least I felt able to stay at the keyboard in my appartment and do some work all day. There is some danger that it wasn't all that coherent.

I'm not quite there yet - I am now in the phase where all sensation of taste has disappeared, or rather that part that is experienced by the nose rather than the tongue. The first time this happened to me it lasted several days, and I really began to wonder if taste would return to me. It is actually rather horrible to feel the texture of what you are eating and sense saltiness, bitterness etcetera but nothing of the actual flavour whatsoever. There's a guy called Rob Rhinehart, a software engineer no less, who has mixed up every kind of known nutritious element into a goo he calls Soylent and advocates as all you need to eat and not requiring any preparation apart from dissolution in water. The main benefit he claims is that you do not lose so much time preparing and eating food. What a stupid premise! Food is part of what makes life worthwhile, it is what time is for! This is really an inversion of values, like having lots of money as your ultimate goal and forgetting that money is only good for buying the things you actually need or like. I have more sympathy for Cypher, the defector in The Matrix, who preferred tasty virtual food to the snot-like porridge he had to make do with in the real world - not unlike this Soylent, in point of fact.

So there - end of rant, and end of post.