Seanan McGuire (seanan_mcguire) wrote,
Seanan McGuire
seanan_mcguire

  • Mood:
  • Music:

Epidemiology is fun for everybody!

Starting yesterday morning, I began to present the exact same symptoms that I was presenting this time last week. That's right: reinfection has been achieved. Yippee! Only wait...no. Not yippee. Anti-yippee. This is the dark reflection of yippee, lurking in the tenebrous corners of the universe, waiting to destroy my enjoyment of everything.

I literally sat down with a pen and paper, made a list of everything I encountered during my probable infection period (assuming a two- to three-day incubation, which is roughly average for this sort of virus), and proceeded to check off the things that I encountered during the period where I didn't get sick. Like John Snow on his quest for the Broad Street pump, I was on a quest for a viral reservoir! Only he wasn't, y'know, dying of cholera while he was looking for the thing that caused all that cholera. I am not entirely happy with my needing to catch the virus to know I needed to find it.

The probable culprit? The toothbrush I keep in Kate and GP's bathroom for my Thursday night sleepovers. Kate has thrown it away, and we'll be testing the theory when I go to house-sit for them (starting tomorrow night). So I feel very much like a kick-ass epidemiologist, wiping out threats everywhere that she goes. Except for the part where, oh, yeah, I'm still sick. I had to go to work today, since it's already a short week, and literally nearly passed out at my desk several times. I feel like death warmed over. I look like death warmed over. The Four Horsemen all want my number. Pestilence called me 'a real hottie.'

If this is my last entry, blame the microbes.
Tags: medical fu, pandemic time
  • Post a new comment

    Error

    Anonymous comments are disabled in this journal

    default userpic

    Your reply will be screened

    Your IP address will be recorded 

  • 31 comments
I feel like death warmed over. I look like death warmed over. The Four Horsemen all want my number. Pestilence called me 'a real hottie.'

This is just begging to be metaquotesed. May I?
Of course.
So do I. :(
I'm right there with you. I feel like I've been dragged 150 miles by a loaded coal truck. :(
I am so very sorry.
We'll both get better! :D
Reminds me of the time the otherkin community tried to track the constant noro-something that broke out at its gathers. One site was looking pretty badly contaminated, and everyone was tossing out ideas ("Couldn't have been the water; I drank it and swam in it!" Well, there's your problem...)

If Don Francis had caught smallpox while eradicating it, he might've been nearly as badass as you are right now. Hang in there.
Ah, smallpox. Best horrible spotty plague ever conceived. Someday, it will return, because nothing is ever really extinct, and then? Then, we're all gonna die.
Primus, I hope not. That would be embarrassing. I'd much rather my race be wiped out by something interesting and slightly unexpected like velociraptors or zombies or the planet rising up to kick our ungrateful asses with coordinated volcanic eruptions. Maybe an asteroid, or maybe broccoli will all of a sudden prove to have been slowly poisoning our genomes since the first parent said "eat your vegetables."

Or, better yet, the ages-old war between two subgroups of giant, transforming alien robots, thus providing dying humanity with the hope that our arts and culture will live on in someone's databanks and five hundred thousand years after the last human has died in a brilliant blast of laser fire, somebody will succeed in RickRolling the Supreme Commander of the bad guys, and there will be much rejoicing.

(Because no apocalypse-related comment from me is complete without a mention of Decepticons.)
It would definitely be an embarrassing final pandemic. Also a sociologically fascinating one here in the United States -- how does an image- and youth-obsessed culture cope when the pandemic kills most of the young (those under the age of pre-existing vaccination) and disfigures the survivors?

Fascinating stuff. And hooray for giant robots!
Y'know, you're not exactly dissuading me from following Sky and Sunshine to super-tightly-controlled Grand Cayman in twenty years when they retire. :-) I loves me some historical plagues, but not to the extent of wanting to relive them.

The one place I consistently could not infect in that pandemic game was, after all, an island...

Madagascar kicked your ass too?

*sympathizes*

*doubletakes upon realizing precisely WHAT she's sympathizing over*

*shrugs it off and continues to sympathize*

lovefromgirl

8 years ago

kyra_neko_rei

8 years ago

seanan_mcguire

8 years ago

kyra_neko_rei

8 years ago

seanan_mcguire

8 years ago

Were you in the dead dog @ OVFF when Bill Roper did this song?

http://www.filker.com/songs/Snowflakes.html

(A recording (not great quality) does exist.)

seanan_mcguire

8 years ago

Oh now that's just all kinds of wrong! I'm on the mend, more or less. Have most of my voice back, only coughed up my right lung once today and had 3 sneezing fits (as opposed to 7 yesterday). I was hoping you would post the same. Poor you! *chicken soup hugs*
It's that stupid viral reservoir. Please gods, I nailed it the first time, and will now be able to get better.
Feel better, dear.
I'm trying. I hate life right now.
Feh. Get well soon.

I am in awe of your ability to write in ways that make us all laugh even when you feel like crap.
I blame the NyQuil. NyQuil loves me.
NyQuil does love you. XD
Like a true friend, it tried to visit you again as soon as possible. ^.^

Seriously though, Get well soon.
Well, it should have called first.
No Dying! Not allowed!

Just so we're clear.
I'm doing my best, I swear!