21 reasons to take your vitamins

and elderberry

It's 1:40am and I’m wide awake because I took Sudafed. Sorry not Sudafed, pseudoephedrine. The kind they sell behind the counter. The kind you have to show an ID to buy because you can use it to make meth. They shouldn’t ask for your ID though, they should ask for your report card from 10th grade chemistry. I couldn’t make meth if I tried. One time I tried to make banana bread “from memory” and ended up with a sort of dense banana cookie. I’m a great cook but a lousy baker because I hate when people tell me exactly what to do.

So because of my night meth, I can’t sleep. And I took my night meth because I’m going on day 6 of the flu. When you’re sick, 6 days feels like 6 weeks. When you’re sick and already predisposed to dramatics, 6 days makes all your friends feel like it’s been 6 weeks. Spending 6 days alone in my house means I learned a lot, for better or for worse. And now that my fever has finally broken I’m going to share my discoveries with you.

1. Breathing out of your nose is euphoric.

2. Coughing is your body’s way of getting rid of an irritant/pathogen.

3. Coughing for a week is your body’s way of toning abs when you’ve been putting it off.

4. You can take Advil and pseudoephedrine at the same time.

5. You can take Tylenol and Mucinex at the same time.

6. You can’t take Tylenol and NyQuil at the same time.

7. You can Google “how long can I have a fever before I should be worried” and the results will be AI generated, and inconclusive.

8. Pseudoephedrine makes you really awake.

9. If you call your doctor, they’ll tell you they can’t see you until January. You can explain over the phone that hopefully your flu won’t be persistent 5 months from now, and ask if there’s any way you could see someone sooner. The nice lady on the phone will tell you to go to urgent care.

10. Urgent care is where they once misdiagnosed my friend’s migraine as bacterial meningitis. The thing that killed the President’s son on Scandal. I don’t want to judge all urgent cares but I’m wary now.

11. Scandal has so many episodes that you can watch it during your entire illness and never run out. Unless you’re really sick until January and then you’re out of luck. Try Grey’s Anatomy. Actually don’t watch that when you’re sick because then you’ll be convinced you need a below the knee amputation for your sore throat.

12. Soup only tastes good when it’s your choice. When you’re sick and you have to eat soup, all you want is a cheesesteak. 9/10 doctors do not recommend.

13. The only soup I love is French onion soup, and that barely counts as a soup. I like caramelized onions, Gruyere, and bread. Everything leads back to sandwich. Anyway.

14. Advil is the best, most effective drug ever invented. Or maybe it’s second best to meth but I wouldn’t know.

15. They say Breaking Bad wouldn’t have existed if Walter White had good health insurance because then he’d be able to pay for his cancer treatment. But I think he still would have done the whole drug lord thing because he loved power and not all the money or insurance in the world can tame that thirst. Did I mention I’ve been binge watching Scandal.

16. If I was having an affair with the President of the United States I’d be sooo annoying about it. But I’d get my friends the coolest Cameos for their birthdays.

17. Shakespeare wrote King Lear during the plague but while I’ve been sick all I’ve managed to create is this, and one bowl of rice. 

18. Your ears, nose, and throat are connected in a major way. They should name a medical specialty after it.

19. Being unable to go anywhere is giving me a false sense of who I think I am when I’m healthy. I catch myself saying “I would have gone to a dance class, if I wasn’t sick.” “I could have made bolognese from scratch today, if I wasn’t sick.” “I would have walked the length of manhattan today, if I was healthy.” I didn’t do any of that one week ago when I could have. Because work is really busy right now.

20. Being sick has solidified what I already knew, which is that I want to make stuff for sick days. The books, the TV shows, the soup you slurp when you’re home all day and you don’t want soup. I want to make the stuff you watch when you can’t be a person, so you just watch other people try and fail at it. I want to make someone else’s future sick day better, and not by baking them banana bread.

21. I understand why they put the Sudafed behind the counter. If you need me, I’ll be awake until January, when I can finally see my doctor.