and then my body cried, "UNCLE!"

not surprisingly (to me), i appear to be coming down with a cold. i woke up at about 2am with an inexplicably sore left side of my throat. it had been totally fine when i went to bed just four hours earlier but, suddenly, swallowing hurt. i told myself it was a side effect of having walked to and from work yesterday, that i must have breathed in too much of the dusty-with-road-salt air and that the air had irritated my sinuses and throat. i drank some water and went back to bed, but didn't sleep.

i tossed and turned until 6:30am, repeatedly checking on my throat by swallowing. yep, still sore. it improved a little when i finally got up at 7 and had breakfast... but, a few hours later, i knew it wasn't leaving.

as i say, i'm not surprised. i've been going full-tilt for the past two weeks. i haven't slept properly at all and, many nights, wind up with just three or four hours of fitful sleep. i've been working long-ish hours, exercising, walking back and forth from the office... in short: my body has been under a LOT of physical and mental stress.

add to that a slew of über-germy colleagues who insist on coming in to work while sick, coughing and sneezing and spreading the plague from cubicle to cubicle. i'd been dosing up on vitamins and bathing in hand sanitizer but, with a fatigued body and mind, my immune system evidently threw up a white flag to the tsunami of cooties.

so, my body is sending me a message i can't ignore. loud and clear. TAKE IT EASY.

now, i don't feel sick. i just have a sore throat. for now. the normal progression of a cold for me is a sore throat (a day or two), followed by sinus congestion (three or four days), followed by a cough (eight thousand years). it's not usually until day two or three that i start to feel like i'm wearing a onesie made of lead and mucous.

BUT... i'm doing my best to recharge my system today and tomorrow (and, probably, monday... when i'll work from home) in the hopes of shortening the length and severity of whatever this is. i'm taking plenty of vitamin C and zinc, and downing a ton of fluids. i've also been trying to kick the sore throat to the curb with a tincture of cayenne, turmeric, honey and warm water that i swallow every 15 minutes. thus far, the results are middling at best. every website i've read says, "stick with it! it might take several hours!", but i'm now entering hour three. we'll see.

of course, there's also nyquil, which i may use tonight. not a full dose -- i'm not sick yet -- but enough to create that warm, fuzzy haze that spells S-L-E-E-P. because, i think, i need that more than anything at this point. fingers crossed i wake up tomorrow feeling refreshed and sore-throat-free!