JUST CHEESE

I didn't have much of an appetite today, so I though I would have a simple cheese sandwich for lunch.

That, apparently, is a radical concept that boggles minds. The lady at the sandwich shop didn't stop at boggle, but without confirming her hunch leapt straight through to sausage! And asked what else. Not anything else, thank you, only the cheese.

Paid. Crossed street, up thirteen floors, back at my desk.

WTF?
Sausage?
Not cheese?

Down thirteen floors, crossed street, endeavored to make clear what the ... 'beef' of my issue was. And she on her part endeavored to grasp what this crazy person was saying, and correct the situation.

Thank you, bye. Crossed street, up thirteen floors, back at my desk.

WTF?
Sausage?
AND cheese?

Down thirteen floors, crossed street. Explained to everyone. Oh, okay, we finally get it, nods all round. A brand new product. Crossed street, up thirteen floors, back at my desk.

I now own a sandwich on which there is just cheese. Nothing else, just cheese.

Some lettuce and tomato would've been nice.

------------------------------------------

So why do I have a lunch demand so unusual that it baffled the good ladies across the street? Well, I left work at three o'clock on Thursday (five days ago) feeling quite wankle. By four o'clock I was in bed. By five I was curled up in a tight shivering ball wondering why it was so horribly cold and why the bed was trying to hurt me. Did it suddenly hate me or resent my clear intellectual superiority? Mean bastard, why, I might just do something to get even...... if only it wasn't so buggery cold.

I maintained that position and that sense of wonder till late Saturday afternoon. On Monday I went down to Doctor Jew's office in Chinatown. I was no longer a tight paranoid ball, but I lacked energy and seemed to have gained several inches around my neck.

"Say 'aah'. Again. And again, please. [Palps area immediately under jawline.] My, those glands are nice and swollen, yes sirree, rarely seen them quite so... You've got pharyngitis. Let's get you on some azithromycin."

Turns out pharyngitis is a nice scientific term for "we don't really know what's wrong, it's probably just a seasonal respiratory infection, bacterial we're guessing in your case, not strep cause you aren't in anything like the pain you were in the last time you were here". Yep.

The gamble is this: "if it's bacterial, the azithromycin will axe it. If it's viral, it will probably have been axed by your body by the time you finish the azithromicin. Unless it's mononucleosis - in which case, if you're still sick by the time the pills are gone, we might want to do a test. As an intellectual exercise, of course."


What does any of this have to with a cheese sandwich?

I shall explain. I didn't eat anything from Thursday lunch till Saturday night. No appetite. Then I had half a bowl of rice. Little appetite on Sunday (aggregate total: one bowl of rice). Had a splotch of Indian style rice pudding on Monday for lunch, and a tiny bit of rice soup with chicken bits in the evening. Eh, not much of an appetite. And the azythromicin is playing havoc with my digestive boojums, so I don't want to push the envelope stomach-wise. No bells or whistles, no hecatombs of juicy dead beast. I just wanted a cheese sandwich. And that's what I got.