Unidentifiable Bugs

I've just recovered from a week of cystitis. Didn't I mention that? No. Too busy talking about toes, bums and pigeons. (Reminds me of George Melly's wonderful, rollicking 1960s memoir, Rum, Bum and Concertina: God alone know what he might have done with a fat, feathery pigeon.)

It began the day after I had drunk the last remaining glass in a bottle of Rose wine - the very same one that had reduced me to hangover hell after I'd drunk 3/4 of it on the Friday. Saturday was liver recovery day. On Sunday I found myself doing that lip-smacking, 'Hmm, just got the taste for a nice glass of something cool and alcoholic' thing and tipped down the pink-tinged remnants. They were not good. In fact, they tasted like something that might have been put to better use as a sink cleaner. Or even for making the lavatory bowl sparkle with the 'ting!' of super cleanliness. Next morning, I was down at the storage unit moving boxes when suddenly, I felt a burning in the lower abdomen and a desperate urge to visit the loo. Which was a Portaloo across the hard about a quarter of a mile away.

"Take me home, please," I whimpered to The Boyfriend. "But I want to go to Staples and buy an external hard drive," he grumbled. "No!" I barked. "You can go there later." Thighs were clenched firmly together and eyes were starting to water. "I. Need. To. Go. Home. Now."

There followed six days of misery of near Biblical proportions, during which my usual remedy, bicarbonate of soda (half a teaspoon in a little hot water or flat Coke) failed me for the first time ever. In desperation, I went to the chemist, who sold me something called Oasis, a misnomer if ever I heard one, for what a cystitis sufferer needs is the desert, rather than needing to pee a lakeful. It tasted of cranberry mixed with something so incredibly bitter that the tastebuds went into revolt and the chunder mechanism nearly followed. But it has worked - so much so that last night, a week after the waterworks problem started, I drank a glass of red wine (purely as as experiment, you understand), so far to no ill effect. So, for this camel, the Oasis hit the spot.

Talking of hitting things, my head was just hitting the pillow last night when I realised there was a nasty tickle in my throat, rather as if some of that desert sand was stuck to my tonsils. Then it began. Cough, streaming eyes, phlegmy throat. I took a swig of Glycerine, Lemon and Honey. That didn't ease it at all. I got up, searched the drawer in which I kept my throat sweets and popped one in my mouth. It was hard and vile - probably two years out of date, too. It didn't work. Next, I popped four Nelsons homeopathic cattarrh and sinus pills. Nope.

By now it was 2.30 am. I had retired three hours earlier. In the gloom, I groped, found a bottle, swug. It was Night Nurse. Surely that would do the trick? Cough, stream. No effect whatever, though perhaps that was because there was more on my jimjams than down my throat. The glands in my neck hurt. I'd shivered with cold all day. It was 3.05 am. I had work to do the following day. Desperate measures were called for. I found the battered box containing the last few illicit Spanish sleeping tablets. Broke one in half. Shuddered at the bitter taste as I swilled it down with mineral water.

And slept. Blissfully. Till 10.10 am. Boyfriend thought I must be dead. He'd just made a cup of tea whilst putting off the awful moment of coming in to check. In fact, when I shambled in looking wan, with green gloops of Night Nurse adhering stickily to my front, he started slightly, as one might do if confronted by a recently dug up and supernaturally animated zombie. Which I am today, as the bug hasn't developed into anything yet. It's still merely a tickly cough, runny eyes and thumping headache. But tomorrow, who knows?