May 21, 2018
8:27 p.m.

What a waste of a day. I hate being sick.

They say that sleep is the best thing you can do for yourself when you're sick. Restful sleep is curative.

What do they say about UN-restful sleep? Does it make you sicker?

I crawled into my bed early last night, suffering a migraine headache and wanting  nothing more than restful sleep.

Nope. I tossed and turned, re-made the bed, watched some Netflix and tossed and turned some more. I tried to read, but one-eyed because they other eye refused to function properly.

Migraines are a bitch. I get these lovely auras around objects and people, but only with the left eye. If I have to get things done in spite of the pain, I walk around with my left eye closed. It's rough, because I can actually see better with my left eye, and I'd prefer to close the right eye, but the auras are...distracting.

Birds were singing when I finally drifted off, and when I woke up a couple hours later, I had a fever and sore throat to go along with the headache.

Lovely.

I announced to my parents that I was taking a sick day, and went back to bed after taking some heavy duty cold and flu medication.

(Just so you know, when I reach the point where I medicate, I am good and sick. I hate taking medication.)

I crawled into bed, covered with a quilt and two blankets, and God bless me, I fell asleep.

Then the fun started.

I have vivid dreams all the time, when I manage to sleep. They are in color, very detailed, and often too real to shake off easily when I wake up. Mostly, though, they are benign, depicting everyday things that are plausible in my life.

Fever dreams, though...

Someone gave me a kitten. He was yellow-striped and had a pink nose, and he lay on his back in my arms while I bottle fed him. I put him in a box to sleep.

Flip. Someone handed me a huge cat, yellow striped with a pink nose. He rubbed noses with me and I ran my hand down his back. Hair flew everywhere, so I got a brush and started brushing him. He purred loudly.

In the dream, I was fine.

In the waking world, I was sneezing wildly into my CPAP mask. I yanked it off my face, gasping, and went into the bathroom to complete my sneezing fit and blow my nose repeatedly and then I took a pull on my asthma inhaler and went back to bed.

I put the CPAP back on, because my breathing was still a bit ragged. Who knew an allergic reaction could happen from a dream?

Dear Lord, no more sleep for me, I thought, and started an episode of Rizzoli and Isles on my phone.

Who knows what happened on the show--I fell back to sleep.

A little girl, no more than three, is poking around in my cupboards, looking for food. "Hungy," she whines.

I say my cupboards, but I have no idea where we are. Maybe a cabin somewhere. I also don't know the little girl--although she looks suspiciously like my daughter-in-law when she was a toddler.

No matter, though; the point is, she's hungry. So I make her a sandwich. Hamburger patties have appeared out of nowhere, so I use one. When I turn around, there are two more little girls, so I make sandwiches for them, too. I put them on this bright yellow table and call them to come and eat. The littlest one climbs up on a chair and tumbles off and I grab her before she can hit the floor.

Flip.

The girls are gone. I'm in a different house--I think. My brother hollers from the porch, "Hey, Dad! Merle Haggard is here to see you!"

Merle comes in, and my Dad enters from another part of the house. We are all in a large room with some chairs, a bed with wooden head and footboards, and a big braided rug.

Dad shakes hands with Merle Haggard. They sit in chairs facing each other, and suddenly, the bright yellow table is there, and they have about a dozen different digital cameras scattered across it. They are discussing the merits and flaws of each one, and sharing ideas about how to get the best shots from each when photographing the fish they've caught.

"Leave it to those guys to take up the conversation right where they left off last week," my brother says.

"Hey," Merle grumbles good-naturedly. "We only have so much time left to figure this out."

"Yeah," Dad says.

Some woman comes in with a baby. She drapes him over the footboard of the bed, head down, bottom up. She tells him to stay right there while she watches the rest of her movie. Then, she promises, she will change his diaper. Then she turns around and leaves the room!

I am outraged.

I pick up the baby and cuddle him. He's stinky; he really does need a diaper change, so I lay him down and proceed to change his poopy diaper.

My brother hands me a new nappy while I tell the baby "Ooo, yucky!" and the baby giggles at me.

The diaper is huge, and I complain about the size.

Merle Haggard says, "I'll fix that!" He leaves the room and comes back with a diaper that will fit perfectly. Then he sits back down with Dad and starts telling a fishing story and explaining why a certain digital camera was the best one to use to take a picture of his fish.

I sat down on the bed with the freshly diapered baby and started to sing to him, and

Flip!

The yellow striped kitten was back, having a bottle and staring up at me with wide, blue eyes.

And I'm awake.

The fever has broken, but the headache remains.

At least I didn't start sneezing again until after I took a few minutes to go share this dream-wreck with my parents and eat a little bit.

Then I sneezed and sneezed. Yay.

Dream Takeaway? Why on earth would my dad and Merle Haggard be discussing digital cameras? Would you not think music might have come up as a conversational gambit?

Ugh. I hate fevers.

I'm grateful, though, that my fever dreams this time took a bit of a comical turn.

There's a recurring nightmare I have during fevers that I am ever so thankful to have avoided. I may share that with you someday, but for now...

Merle Haggard and cats?

What the heck!

My head hurts. I'll talk to you later.