A Few Modest Updates

Lurgy: Reporting to you on day 13 of bronchitis, I’m doing a lot better but I’m still pretty sick. I’ve shed most symptoms but the cough; however this cough comes from my solar plexus and sounds like a trash can falling down cement stairs, which makes me both exhausted and unpopular. Having been nowhere but the doctor and the sidewalk directly in front of my building in nearly two weeks, I have only extremely modest updates on the other fronts to share, but I have a lot to say about bronchitis, my hated enemy. The main problem is that I cannot sleep most of the time—the coughing gets worse when I lie down. I can approximate sleep sitting in an easy chair and it’s not…terrible? But it’s not that restful. Plus I still cough some. The awkward thing is that occasionally I’ll get a good patch—the cough medicine will work better than usual or some other set of stars will align and I’ll be able to get a few nice hours like a normal person, tucked in bed wearing pyjamas next to my husband. So it is always worth trying to do that and seeing if it works. But most of the time I’ll just start to doze and then be attacked by violent coughing to the point where I think I’m going to vomit (I have never cough-vomited, and realize I probably won’t; it’s just not a good feeling) and scare Mark and scare the cats and have to depart in shame to the living room. It’s a real Charlie Brown and the football situation.

Here is a list of things I have tried/bought in my attempt to get better: amoxicillin (prescribed), a steroid puffer (prescribed), aerochamber because I am too stupid to take the puffer properly, the cheapest humidifier Wirecutter approves of, Otrivin Severe congestion, two convenience packs (Mark calls them “party packs”) of DayQuil/NyQuil, a bottle of plain cough syrup. These ranged from not working at all (amoxicillin) to working for a while before losing effectiveness (DayQuil/NyQuil) to seeming vaguely, indeterminately helpful (humidifier). The only thing that works 100% of the time exactly as advertised is the Otrivin: so satisfying and disgusting. If you add up all the money I’ve spent on this, plus taking taxis to and from the doctor (my doctor is conveniently located where I lived two moves ago and now requires three buses, a feat on a healthy day. Like most Ontarians, I am grateful to have a doctor at all and will not be tampering with this no matter how inconvenient), plus getting groceries delivered, the cost of just being sick is over $300 so far. As usual, I think how much I am spending on all this, and what someone would do if they couldn’t afford these things. And of course, I have worked contract on and off throughout my career but I’m currently working full-time, which means when I took two full days off work because I was too feverish to think, it was not an expense (my employers have been very kind, as indeed have all my employers whenever I’ve been sick, but there’s a big difference between, “Of course, take the day and get some rest!” when you have a sick day allotment versus when you are going to be taking it unpaid. I’m not sure if the contract employers ever realized how their unconcerned kindness read in those circumstances). And of course, this all would have been way more if I didn’t have a partner and he wasn’t crushingly determined to overcome his own physical limitations (recovering from surgery) and execute all our chores himself. We would have gotten a lot more things delivered, is what I’m saying, if Mark weren’t furiously making lasagna and staggering through the snow to the store. It really makes you think. I am, of course, grateful, but still, it is not a fair world we live in.

Severance: Mark and I always watched TV on Friday nights as our special couple thing, and maybe occasionally on other evenings if there was something special to watch or, conversely, nothing else going on on the weekends or a holiday. During the pandemic, there was never anything else going on, and we watched a lot of TV, like probably everyone. I seem to have upset my delicate system in so doing, and these days I hate most TV. I still watch stuff with Mark on Fridays or occasionally other times, but it’s almost always garbage and I have no patience to try to get immersed in serious quality shows. If it’s not New Girl, I just don’t care most of the time. Except Severance! Severance is a genuinely smart, thinky show that requires and repays deep investment. I even read some of the analysis writing you see the morning after each episode drops—that is how much I care. Unheard of! The first season was in 2022, one of the later lockdowns, and maybe I have carried that energy over from it, but also: this show is just so good. Directed by Ben Stiller, and likely to be his legacy above Zoolander and all that solid silliness we have enjoyed in the past, Severance is a show about an alternative reality where people can have a surgical procedure done so that their memories are wiped clean when they go to work, and again when they return—creating a separate/severed self to do their jobs, to whom they have no access. It’s a wild and creepily familiar concept and one that spreads out into increasingly dystopian ramifications as the episodes go on. The cast is led by Adam Scott, who is always so much the character he’s playing that it is easy not to notice what a good actor he is. And Patricia Arquette is in it! And John Tuturro and Christopher Walken and a bunch of people I’ve never heard of but who are equally brilliant. And I’m not a particularly visually minded person but the cinematography and set composition and every tiny detail of this thing is STUNNING. You can watch it just for the tracking shots. Or the crane shots. It is one of the best shows I’ve ever seen, and this is from someone who hates almost all shows. Highly recommended.

Other Shows: While I’ve been sick, reading has been a challenge and I’ve been watching way more TV than usual despite, per above, not liking a lot of it. Sometimes I can’t even take much in but when I am feeling more alert I am critical. I truly like the concept and all the characters on Abbott Elementary—why isn’t it more fun to watch? I watched a tonne of standup specials on Netflix and even though each comic is very excited to be doing their special, the conclusion I’ve reached is that it must not be that hard to get a Netflix special. Many of them just aren’t that funny. I tried skewing towards the more famous ones but that didn’t help. I thought the recent Ellen special skipped between being gently inane—she had some pleasant jokes about butterflies, I guess—and being intellectually dishonest. I have never seen Ellen’s show or her comedy before but I’m a person in the world and knew who she was, so I didn’t come in with a bias or any knowledge, but when she tried to equate being criticized for being gay and being mean, I know a false equivalency when I hear one. Bob Burgers rewatches stand up solidly, forever.

I will try to write about something that isn’t sickness or television next time!