2005-11-20 - 11:17 p.m.

Recently I was down for the count with a nasty cold that kept me in bed and IN-sane.

I was too sick to work…but since my “office” is just across the room from my bed, I couldn’t really rest either. My desk kept calling to me. I kept thinking of things that ABSOLUTELY had to be done immediately. The phone kept ringing. My computer kept saying, “You’ve got freakin’ mail” (because I have it programmed in a “Dr. Evil” voice from Austin Powers). I was cranky, feverish, and half-delirious from lack of sleep and from desperately trying to treat my symptoms with every cold remedy known to man.

Your mind starts playing tricks on you when you have a cold. Maybe it’s just me, but when I have a rotten cold, I feel like I’m never, ever, EVER gonna feel good again. I can’t even imagine it. I had the chills. Every bone in my body ached. My eyeballs were burning. My throat was killing me. I was sneezing green mucus…and coughing up sludge.

You have nothing else to do but feel sorry for yourself when you have a cold. I was hungry, but felt too dizzy to get up and make lunch. I wanted more tea, but the thought of walking all the way to the kitchen…then walking back again when the kettle boiled…was just too much effort. So I just lay there like a dog and drank lots of water and blew my nose until it felt like my brains were gonna squish out.

So, here I was in bed surrounded by two weeks' worth of newspapers that I'd finally gotten around to reading. Every time I moved or adjusted the blankets…the papers would crinkle and crunch or fall off the bed altogether…

“Whatever.
Who cares?
I’ll NEVER feel better again.
I’ll just lay here in a pile of recyclables.
Then they’ll find my rotting corpse here…surrounded by newspapers…as if I were sleeping in the subway.”

By now I hadn’t taken a shower in 48 HOURS and, with the fever and the sweating, this was an olfactory nightmare. I just kept talking to myself…OUT LOUD:

“I’m disgusting.
I STINK.
I have no energy.
Why can’t someone just make me some soup?”
I’m all alone.
I have work to do.
I want to kill all my clients.
They don’t care if I’m sick.
Why are my big toes SO big?
I have 'square' feet.
Look at them...my feet look like bricks.
My skin is so dry and scaly.
I’ll just put more shea butter on it.
Eeewww…GROSS...moisturizing a dirty, smelly body.
This is repulsive.
I feel like I’m covered in dust mites.
I’m wallowing in my own skin flakes.
What a revolting existence.
Why don’t I just shoot myself?”

My hair was totally greasy and tied up in a demented ponytail. My bangs were held back with a bobby pin. I was wearing an old green sweater over my “American Lung Association” tee-shirt and thermal leggings. I put big gray socks on my freak feet. I wore my “at-home” glasses. I stared at myself in the bathroom mirror…

“My hair is way too long.
Gotta get it cut if I ever feel human again.
What’s with my skin?
It looks green.
Why are my pores so large?
Seriously, my skin looks green.
I look 'plague'-ish.
I feel like one giant GERM.
My nails are so long and dried out.
My gray roots are showing.
Gotta color this damn hair.
Wait…I think I just dyed it last week.
What the fuck?
My hair and nails have grown SO fast.
Maybe I have some weird accelerated protein surge.
…or maybe I’m turning into HOWARD (fuckin') HUGHES…in his strange and ugly Las Vegas hermit years.
I look like a ‘bag lady’.”

Now it’s been like 60 HOURS of feeling sick and sorry for myself. The floor around my bed is blanketed with used Kleenex that have missed the wastebasket. My bedside table is a field of empty cereal bowls, sticky yogurt containers and protein bar wrappers…the only foods I’ve had the energy to “prepare” for the past two days. Of course, the sight of this bedside garbage heap reminds me of a funny story.

Most of you know that I’m a pretty serious INSOMNIAC. It’s a major problem. I absolutely cannot sleep like a normal person. My brain doesn’t shut off. As tired as I am…the minute my head hits the pillow, I’m wide awake and churning with anxiety. So…for as long as I can remember…I’ve been taking Ambien in order to catch at least 3-4 hours of sleep a night. Of course, Ambien has at least one disturbing side effect…memory loss.

Well, for weeks I’d wake up in the morning and find a spilled cocoa cup on my night table, or cookie crumbs in my bed, a container of almonds or an empty cereal bowl. Evidently, AFTER I’d taken my Ambien…I would get out of bed and stumble into the kitchen to fetch a bedtime snack to eat while I read myself to sleep. In the morning…I TOTALLY didn’t remember getting up…or eating in bed…or ANYTHING. Elizabeth referred to this as my “sleep-eating" phase.

One morning I awoke and the entire left side of my mouth felt weird and heavy and PARALYZED!! It was just hanging there, all crooked. I completely froze…afraid to even TRY to move, because I was convinced I’d had a STROKE. “Holy shit…this can’t be happening to me..!!” I cautiously attempted to move my left foot. It MOVED..!! Phew..!! Left arm…also working fine. So I tried to talk…figuring, okay, of course, the stroke must have affected by speech.

“MOTHERFUCKER..!!”…I said aloud.

YESsssssssss…..it’s a miracle. I could talk..!! But as I did, my lip still felt weird and big and heavy. So, I jumped out of bed to look in the mirror.

OH. MY. GOD. There was a Saltine stuck to my bottom lip. I must have conked out while “sleep-eating” some crackers. So there it was…a cracker just welded onto my lip with saliva…as if Martha Stewart had attached it with her hot glue gun. “I’m a goddam walking-talking collage..!!”

Well, since then…I’ve stopped taking Ambien and switched to Klonopin, which reduces anxiety without turning me into a nocturnal cracker-munching zombie.

Okay…so back to my miserable cold. On the THIRD day, I arose again from the dead…took a shower…and tried to scrape some of the barnacles off my hull. I was ALIVE again…and desperate for a salad and some fruit. I felt as if I’d spent the last three days in steerage and was five minutes away from scurvy or pellagra or something.

Off to the Village Den I skipped…la, la, la...New York Post in hand. Ordered up a BIG Greek salad with everything, including anchovies and extra feta cheese. A large glass of fresh-squeezed orange juice…AND a fresh lemonade. Ahhhh....!!!

I felt HUMAN again. And where does a New York human best renew herself??...at her favorite Greek diner, of course..!!

“Hey, Alex…gimme a rice pudding to go. ..!!”

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