In the spring of the year before the last decade ended, I got incredibly sick with the flu. There was a bad flu with an ugly name, its mascot an animal often used as an insult, going around New York. There would have been memes about it if there had been memes but there weren’t yet, not quite. Still its name was ubiquitous enough that when I called an emergency medical helpline and described my symptoms and then said “please just tell me I don’t have swine flu” the nurse on the other end of the line said “I can’t… tell you that.” She told me to monitor my temperature and that I didn’t need to come into an ER if it stayed below… 103? 104? It got very close, which is why I don’t remember, exactly, any more than I remember anything coherent or narrative or linear about the next few days; except being in so much pain that I just howled, like an animal, like, well, a swine, squealing in misery.
ten years
ten years
ten years
In the spring of the year before the last decade ended, I got incredibly sick with the flu. There was a bad flu with an ugly name, its mascot an animal often used as an insult, going around New York. There would have been memes about it if there had been memes but there weren’t yet, not quite. Still its name was ubiquitous enough that when I called an emergency medical helpline and described my symptoms and then said “please just tell me I don’t have swine flu” the nurse on the other end of the line said “I can’t… tell you that.” She told me to monitor my temperature and that I didn’t need to come into an ER if it stayed below… 103? 104? It got very close, which is why I don’t remember, exactly, any more than I remember anything coherent or narrative or linear about the next few days; except being in so much pain that I just howled, like an animal, like, well, a swine, squealing in misery.