Flu left me home sick with bad TV, just like childhood

Over most of my working life I only had a handful of illnesses that forced me to stay home from work. The last four years I’ve now had the flu three times counting this past week.

The first two of those I was properly vaccinated and yet tested positive for the real flu anyway. I gave up on the flu shot and still it nailed me. I’m not sure if it’s the gregariousness of this job or the fact that I’m spending more time in doctors’ offices or what but this stuff is really getting old.

I had it in my chest and in my head and sinuses and I soaked so many shirts with fever sweats everyday it was ridiculous. My little dog with a heart condition has a distinct wheeze when she sleeps. On day two I couldn’t tell whose chest was wheezing at any one time, mine or hers. Together we rode it out in the recliner for three long days. Of course the recliner is where she spends her time when I’m at work anyway. She usually has it to herself, however.

The doctor prescribed Tamiflu and said I should be better by Thursday. The note he handed me said I was good to return by Wednesday. That might have worked if I had started that medicine 12 hours earlier as planned. But I have this phone app that messages me when a prescription is ready to pick up and since it wasn’t ready to pick up by the time I drove across town I decided to lay down and rest a bit.

When I woke up I noticed the prescription was ready but it was 5:15 p.m. and rush hour in the pharmacy line. I’ll wait awhile. When I made it down there I was reminded that the hours had changed and so I would be going back in the morning.

As I did when I was little and home sick, I watched old Westerns for a while. Then I switched to YouTube videos. I’ve been into channels where some guy goes and rescues a car that’s been sitting in a barn or behind a barn for 50 years — a “barn find” they call them.

I got sucked into one of special interest where a cat in Nova Scotia finds a 1936 Hudson Terraplane online and buys just from the photos. The guy’s channel is famous for chopping cars and turning them into Rat Rods and this concerned me with this car because my grandparents had one in their garage from among my first memories. My dad also rebuilt a Terraplane and a Hudson pickup so I really didn’t want to see this thing chopped.

Turns out it was a car in excellent condition, a true survivor. The old man he was buying from had taken it for his driving test and used it for work for years after that and taken excellent care of it. All of the comments on the video begged the guy to restore it and not chop it.

I watched a few minutes of the follow-up video and sure enough, the guy had wrecked the paint on the back fenders with a spray gun and was about to take the saw to the front fenders. I had to turn it off.

That made me feel ill all over again but it did inspire me to get out of the chair and away from the TV the next day.

Get the vaccine if you like or don’t if you like, either way it’ll cost you at least three days of bad TV and fever.

Karl Terry writes for Clovis Media Inc. Contact him at:

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