Do you remember covid? That dread disease which scoured the world and forced the bulk of the human race into panic stricken isolation until we decided to ignore it instead. Now that all of the shouting has died down, the restrictions lifted and the politicians we praised for saving civilisation are now being pilloried for wasting huge amounts of money the time has come. Naturally I had to wait to catch covid until it was no longer fashionable. Rasping, coughing and trembling slightly (you might call that covid I call it "morning") I blew the cobwebs off a covid testing kit that was so old it should have been sold in Africa and stuck a swab up my nose. Possibly excited at finally being the centre of attention the test kit came up with an enthusiastically positive result. Right on cue my symptoms started deteriorating as my body realised it had a perfect excuse to stop trying.
"I have covid," I announced to no one in particular. The seedy gang of plush toys who collectively make up "no one in particular" in my household greeted the news in a variety of ways. The spider stared in horror at the ruined cobwebs and muttered something about me being a home wrecker. Boris the bear from London said something but his Cockeye accent is difficult to understand (Cockeye is like Cockney but a bit higher up). The puffin was on a three day Ajax bender and simply gibbered but the most disturbing response was from the plague doctor. He was delighted, apparently he had been breeding a fresh crop of leeches for just such an occasion.
"Don't worry about a thing," he said unsuccessfully trying to remove the grin from his face. "I will take care of you. I'll heat up the cupping jars right now and sharpen my best blood letting knife." I looked around at the others but they were all backing slowly away and doing their best not to breathe the suddenly polluted air. I tried to inform the plague doctor that I was vaccinated and that surely I would be fine after what I hoped was a brief period of discomfort. He wasn't listening, he was too busy pulling out his medical textbooks (the most recent was written by Galen) and checking the potency of his scorpion venom.
As much to escape unwanted medical attention as for any other reason I fled to my home office and informed my colleagues that I had covid but would nobly struggle through without missing any work. One of said colleagues contacted me and, as politely as she could, queried my sanity. I admitted I was afraid of showing weakness in front of the plague doctor who would try and treat me or the puffin who would steal my shoes. In light of the concern showed by this individual I revised my "nobly working through" plans in favour of "sitting around doing nothing" plans. It was as well that I did. Logging on to my work computer was the last coherent thing I was capable of doing that day. The discomfort increased to the point where "pain" is a better definition and my attention span disintegrated to the point where I couldn't remember whatever it was that I was doing when I stopped remembering it.
One constant remained, the plague doctor fussed around pressing various liquids on me that he wanted me to drink and producing ever more disturbing pieces of surgical equipment whose fate it was, apparently, to wind up in some part of my anatomy. At any other time I would have wondered where he got all of this stuff from. I'm pretty sure you can't order it over the internet without the police paying you a visit. At the moment though I simply forgot its existence whenever I left the room which made it an unpleasant surprise when I encountered it again. I didn't drink the liquids. I spilled a little and it burned a hole in the carpet. I was going to pour it down the sink but the puffin said he would take care of it.
I spent a miserable, pain tossed night. Sleeplessness was my companion partly because of the covid but mainly because I was terrified of what the plague doctor might get up to if I fell asleep in his presence. I dragged myself out the next morning whimpering in self pity. The dining table was adorned with burnt herbs, prepped leeches, various extraction instruments (although god knows what they were intended to extract) and a bowl of something green and bubbling sitting over an open flame.
"No," I whimpered, "no, no, no."
"Oh for god's sake," snapped the plague doctor. "If you really want to feel better there's half a box of Codral on your bookcase that you've had for ages. That should deal with the symptoms at least."
I can't really explain why it took forty eight hours to figure out that Codral might help in this situation but once realisation dawned I started gobbling them like tic tacs. It is for this reason that the next two days of covid were infinitely better than the first two. I can still feel the covid under the surface but the Codral is managing to mask the symptoms quite effectively and frankly that is all I usually want from medication anyway. Recovery or death will happen eventually, I just don't want much in the way of discomfort while my body is making up its mind.
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