Nurse the Hate: Hate The Flu

I got a flu shot a couple of days ago, convinced by the wild media reports of rampant illness and bodies stacked like cordwood on the side of the road.  That’s the best thing about a media driven health scare.  It’s never “some people may get sick, you’ll feel like crap for a few days”.  The focus is always “authorities believe that children and senior citizens will drop like flies, and normal healthy adults will be relegated to immeasurable fevers, left twisting in their sweat under filth laden sheets”.  I got sold.  I bought in.  $31 later at a local CVS where a woman probably no more qualified than a Jiffy Lube employee shot me full of live influenza virus, I was on my way. 

Despite feeling 100% normal prior to the injection, I immediately began to feel that slightly achy, bad sinus combination that is usually the harbinger of some type of awful winter illness.  I had an odd night of sleep the first night, but the real feature presentation was last night.  Wild dreams involving me flying military jets dropping napalm on screaming citizens.  Walking around street fairs in New Orleans where everyone was in costume but me.  A big peroxide blonde curvy woman in a 1980s pant suit that looked vaguely like Miss Kitty on Gunsmoke that gave me car keys on a leather key chain and demanded I pick up her daughter despite me having no idea who her daughter was or where she might be located.  Walking around a dusty weathered abandoned century home, the creaking floorboards leading to a furnished bedroom where a woman cried and asked me to help her.  She wouldn’t tell me what she needed help with, and soon sat on the edge of the bed looking at me wide eyed.  We then sat down and started writing songs, one of which she solved with the perfect chord change, one that was so obvious yet totally hidden to me.  Sadly, I can't remember the tune.  I was then picked up at the house by military police, led back to the aircraft carrier, where I took off in the plane and began the dream cycle again.  It repeated three times.  I woke up more tired than when I went to bed. 

While waiting to get my flu shot at the CVS, I noticed a product on sale I am eager to try.  ZzzQuil Nighttime Sleep-Aid has a “warming berry flavor” and claims to be “non-habit forming”.  It looks exactly like Nyquil but offers no cold relief, which I take to mean it is a syrupy alcohol without any decongestants.  I think it is like a really bad digestivo, slightly more hellish than Kummerling or Underberg.  Is this something that should be sold at a pharmacy or should it be sold at a liquor store?  I love the fact that this product is available at all, and that the Nyquil people are now embracing the fact that most people use Nyquil strictly to feel The Velvet Glove of its embrace.  I cannot ever recall hearing anyone say “That Nyquil cleared me up”.  I do recall hearing people make a low moaning sound as if remembering a tryst with a secret lover.  That moan you hear?  That is what is commonly referred to in Business 101 classes as “product demand”. 

The move tonight might be to combine the lingering effects of this injection with ZzzzQuil Nighttime Sleep-Aid to see exactly what happens.  Whenever I take Nyquil, it’s like riding the Syrup Dragon.  I can only imagine the wild ride I will go on tonight.  In case I never wake up after taking a heavy dose of this “non-habit forming nighttime sleep-aid”, remember me as an adventurer.  If I wake, I will then look for the ultimate thrill ride, “ZzzQuil DAYTIME Sleep-Aid”.  It must be out there somewhere…