03 June 2001 ~ Day one...

Things are not quite so dark as they seemed yesterday.

Norma-Shannon seems fairly willing to give me a leave of absence from work while I lay around doing nothing. And Brian, my dear, probably 80% insane friend from Seattle, called last night (at five in the morning because nobody really understands time differences except people in Wyoming, and nobody lives in Wyoming...) talking about flying across the country to feed me soup... I swear, if I wasn't probably contagious, I'd have kissed my phone.

It's funny, how in times of ridiculous difficulty, like for example, contracting a virus that causes one to lie around all day whining and watching Lifetime, one discovers who one's real friends are. One's REAL friends walk with one across the street to get groceries when one feels like passing out on the sidewalk instead of going ALLLLLL the way across the street. One's real friends actually drag one to the hospital in the first place. One's real friends (my mother, to be exact) offer to throw one of those stupid 25-dollars-a-head spaghetti dinner benefits so that one does not lose her apartment. One's real friends decide to fly across a continent, regardless of the potential for contracting a gross infectious disease, to feed one bowls of healing soup for the mere price of companionship and the promise of a blackberry mocha latté.

One's REAL friends, however, do not call when one is sleeping, and, upon learning that one was trying to sleep, offer dumbass medical advice about trying to get ahold of antibiotics. Dudes, if you want to be helpful, don't fucking remind me that I'm miserable, and don't fucking remind me that there's no cure for mono short of waiting it out and drinking a lot of orange juice. And PLEASE don't make me explain my symptoms anymore...

Have I mentioned yet that I got away with some super-neat hospital gear? The barf-pans are great... I think I'll fill them with jelly-beans and give them away as gifts... Maybe I'll do the same with the urine-sample jar. I can only imagine the look of horror on Chris' face if I handed him a urine-sample jar filled with yellow jelly beans and told him "thanks for being a friend... I saved you some of my crystals..." Ohhh, the amusement factor would be priceless...

The amusement factor is unbelievably necessary. After all, I've been watching Lifetime all day. Oy.

It's funny -- I've been sleeping, literally, most of the day. Outside of going across the street to buy soup and orange juice, I've been mostly sleeping, waking up for short intervals, and falling back to sleep. But every time I wake up, there's a brief, but significantly freaky moment of complete disorientation. Where the hell am I? Is that "Eraserhead" on TV? Oh, wait, that's my poster. What house am I in? Actually, at some point today, I really thought I had woken up in my dorm-room at college. THAT sprung from this bizarre dream about... hm... a very long tunnel filled with gargoyles and hard pear cider... Don't ask.

I'm going back to bed now. Somebody write me letters or something... I need entertainment...

~Helena*