On Tuesday last week I trooped into London to have dinner with a friend.

In the middle of the night that night, I woke up feeling really shit.

By Wednesday it was clear that I was ill.

Flu symptoms exploded on me - lymph nodes in my neck the size of goose eggs. Fever. Runny nose. Exhaustion. Aching muscles. I was a poster child for illness and a pharmaceutical community's wet dream. If it came in pill form I probably was downing it. If it came in spray form I probably was inhaling it. If it promised any kind of relief of any kind I sought it out. I'm lucky I didn't know any dealers in the neighborhood, I feel certain I would have even gone down the illegal route in my attempts to feel better.

Thursday and Friday last week the flu owned me, and I couldn't even struggle in to work.

And then it turned out it wasn't the flu anyway.

On Saturday it transpired that the flu I was dealing with was really the plague glandular fever. Which, if you live Stateside, you might know as Mono. The beast also nicknamed the Kissing Disease, and an illness you generally get in your teens.

Angus looked at me. "I thought you were too old to get glandular fever."

"Thanks honey. That makes me feel so much better," I replied dryly.

"Do you know where you got it?"

"Lemme' see - since the only people I kiss are you, Nick, and Nora, I can't really work out how I could've caught it. Well, there are those nights I work the Portsmouth docks welcoming sailors home on shore leave, but I tend to think of that as not so much lascivious behavior, more my civic duty."

"Very funny."

"I know. Funny and one big walking infection! The perfect woman, that's me."

Saturday night more fun came up - a rash started spreading across various parts of my anatomy.

"I am so gross," I whinge to Angus. "Any minute now my skin will just split and pus will start oozing out."

"And that's me gone right off my dinner," Angus replied cheerfully.

The good news is I've gone from insomniac to raging sleeper. I can't get enough. I fall asleep constantly and at the drop of a hat. Whole hours are wiled away snoozing, and I get to enjoy feverish dreams, the ones where the colors are too bright and the plot too bizarre.

Sunday I started developing thrush (Stateside this is a yeast infection). I've been battling that with Canesten, hoping I can keep it from going full-blown.

Yesterday I broke down and went to the doctor.

"Put me in a bubble!" I moaned. "I'm a bane to society!"

The doctor ignored my ministrations, proceeded to take my temperature (38.5/101), checked out my mammoth lymph nodes, got a flash of my pubes as I showed her the rash (which is darkest on my hips/groin area and abdomen) and then deep throated me with a tongue depressor. All before 9am and I didn't even have to leave a tip.

I was pronounced as either having glandular fever or a hell of a raging streptoccocal infection. There was no point trying to deduce which one I have as glandular fever isn't treatable, it just needs to run its course. I've been put on antibiotics for the streptoccocal infection. This after the doctor had a long self-debate of if this was right or not, as this country is not big on handing on antibiotics. I remember as a kid antibiotics were handed out like Pez - You look peakish! Have some eurythromiacin! - but over here they fear antibiotic resistance (rightfully so) and so rarely prescribe them. The hope is that I have the bacterial streptoccocal infection, which the antibiotics will address. If not, if I have the viral glandular fever, then the worst the antibiotics will do is nothing.

"Oh," the doctor called cheerfully after my departing form. "But the antibiotics will make the thrush a lot worse."

My crotch rot can attest to that, thanks.

-H.

PS-ok, I need some help. I am one of those sad individuals that loves to cook and that loves cooking magazines. The problem is all of the magazines seem to have heartily embraced the credit crunch - Feed your family for under a fiver! the headlines scream, only when you open the magazine it gives you truly horrible shit, like a recipe for beans on toast or animal fat spread on the palm of your hand and licked off. Why does an inexpensive meal have to be so crap?

So I'd like to put together a post of nice, delicious, cheap recipes that can feed a family. I'd love any recipes, which I will post on Friday (as well as a few of my own) and we can all have access to some new ideas (and then give feedback on afterwards! It's like a club! A clique!). Just hit that "Contact" button at the top of the page, or else use helen {@} everydaystranger {dot} eu (removing the { } of course). I just want to find good, hearty, cheap recipes that we can all enjoy insteadof larging it in the misery of the recession. So if you have an idea, send it to me (and you'll be credited of course). Let's say we make it under £10/$10/10 Euros or thereabouts. If you're like me, in that you are on a budget and need to feed a family, then let's find a way to help each other out (or am I the only one who's sick of awful recipes that promise cheap eats?). Thanks in advance!

Posted by: Everydaystranger at 10:12 AM | Comments (18) | Add Comment
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