By Bill Peterson
Commentary
The cold and flu season hit The Hays Highway with the approximate force of a blizzard this week. Your correspondent has no idea what he caught, but it's hung around for about a week and it laid him out good.
The oddity about this bug lies in its symptoms, though the writer can't pretend to expertise because he seldom takes ill. This was no headache or stomachache, no nausea, very little cough, and no stuffiness. Instead, it was consistent and persistent fatigue and physical weakness, diminished motor skills and a lack of cognitive processing power.
In short, it feels as if I've been replaced inside my body by someone else who isn't quite as intelligent or coordinated. And I don't have much margin of error to begin with. Tasks that usually take 15 minutes were taking an hour. Any conversation of the slightest complexity was out of range. It seemed as though houses I've been driving past for ten years were brand new, like I'd never seen them before.
Just as odd, the illness didn't progressively go away. It peaked on Monday, about three days in, then started to go away on Tuesday, but Tuesday through Thursday were fits and starts. You're thinking for a couple hours that the illness is going away, then it punches back.
I thought the only way to beat this thing was to just outsleep it, so I gave that a try and finally began feeling a little normal on Friday.
A very weird, scary illness, a challenge to the equilibrium. Posting on The Hays Highway was out of the question. Even if I could summon the strength to write, I couldn't put a noun and verb together to write a sentence. Even if I could put a noun and verb together to write a sentence, it might not have made any sense. Maybe this doesn't make sense, either. I'm still recovering, but feeling better.
Many people in the area have discussed this bug going around with some kind of awe, simply not understanding what it is. I certainly wouldn't have understood it, either. And now that I've had it, I still don't.
