Do you get fever dreams?

Saturday I kept feeling worse and worse. The muscle aches, fever, and the cough finally clinched it. I have the flu.

This is who I am: Happy that it's been 9 years since my last bout with the flu. I like that. My life is so much better than it was 9 years ago. How wonderful that I'm healthy so often. How rare it is for me to be truly ill.

Sunday I needed cough drops. I'm sorry. I'm sorry Metrolift drivers. I'm sorry Walmart employees. I really needed my cough drops. Imagine my horror when I read the label on my cough drops. Red #40 and Yellow #5. Whatever I've got, it'll be a lot worse with a migraine. I barely had enough "undyed" cough drops to get me to Sunday morning.

Halls naturals uses beta-carotene (natural food coloring) to color it's cough drops. They also have sage extract, which is really great for sore throats. I got some sugarfree Ricola and the generic Halls' as well.

The encouraging thing, if I can call it that, is that many other customers were also sporting the flushed and feverish look, the dry hacking cough, and the general malaise that I had. It's not just me, everyone goes to Walmart when they're sick. It would be interesting to do a study and see if the cashiers have more antibodies than the average person on the street. I imagine they do.

Sunday also brought the fevers and the fever dreams. When I checked, I had fevers of 101.5. This morning it was down to normal. I had horrible fever dreams yesterday and last night. Creepy, surreal landscapes like an awful painting that gives you the creeps; except I can't look away, I'm stuck in it, battling my way out. Horrible.

Thank God I'd taken my mood stablizers and antipsychotics; I can't imagine how much worse it could have been.

A fever is an excellent way for your body to fry viruses. They can't stand heat, it kills them. I didn't take anything to lower my fever and I'm glad. I was pretty much limited to Benadryl (for the runny nose and sneezing) and Mucinex (for the coughing and congestion). The usual antihistamines will make me freak out for a week with one dose. Same with decongestants, if I'm very lucky I might be able to take one dose and not get hyper. I wasn't hurting too bad until this morning (and my fever was down anyway), so I didn't want a painkiller (it will lower the fever, which fries the viruses). So, Mucinex and Benadryl.

This morning I had a pretty hideous headache, but the Alka-Seltzer killed it dead. Yay. I just have the cough (which does make my head hurt),weakness, and muscle aches. I read somewhere that when your body is under attack it will break down muscle tissue to make more antibodies. It makes sense. I don't have much of an appetite, which is a little bit of a problem. I have to eat a pretty good meal to take my mood stabilizers. If I don't, I'll get sick. When I finish here I'll eat some breakfast and take my pills (bipolar pills).

So, what did I do to help myself? What worked? God forbid, if you're sick, what are good ideas?
Here goes:

• Do not eat sugar in any form. Sugar is death to your immune system. If you want some fruit, eat the whole fruit, not just the juice (I ate some orange segments).
• Spicy foods are great for breaking up congestion. I, the flavor wimp, actually craved hot sauce. I ate plenty and I feel it helped a lot. Garlic and onions are awesome immunity foods, too. If you like Chinese food, get some hot and spicy soup. Egg drop would be good, too, lots of protein.
• Eat lots of protein. Your body fights infection by making antibodies (out of protein). If you don't have much of an appetite, stick to the protein foods.
• Take a hot bath. Hot baths are great for getting steam into your "passages", relaxing you, and raising your core temperature to help kill those nasty viruses.
• Olive leaf, 500 mg capsules, with 6% Oluropein (I get mine at GNC). I feel my illness would have been a lot worse if I hadn't taken them.
• Vitamin C - it's been done to death, but I feel it works. I won't get into the details but I realized my bipolar pills deplete my body of vitamin C. I will probably take at least 500 mg a day from here on out.
• Vitamin A - Excellent for healing and tissue health. I got mine by taking the Walmart "Antioxidant" formula. It's got Zinc (awesome for healing), Vitamin C (a respectable 250 mg), and a day's worth of Vitamin A. I took a couple a day.

That's it! It's nice to know I'm going to live. I knew the whole time, but I actually feel it now.