Down with a Bad Cold, I Slept for a Day and a Night

The night before last I had diarrhea twice. At first I didn't pay much attention; I thought it was caused by the seafood I had eaten the day before. Yesterday morning, after breakfast, I began to feel chilled all over, with a sore throat. I forced myself to sit at the computer and watch a bit of video lectures, but my head ached more and more, and my body also began to ache—I could even feel the blood vessels in my brain throbbing, much like the symptoms of my first COVID infection.

By around nine in the morning I finally could not hold on any longer and climbed into bed. My whole body ached and felt wretched, I felt nauseous, my throat felt as if I were swallowing razor blades, and I was chilled with no sweating. I quickly turned on a hair dryer and blew hot air on myself, which made me feel a little better. I also drank two more packets of Gegen Tang granules, and finally managed to break a sweat. Once I sweated I felt a bit lighter, but I was still miserable and did not even have the strength to get out of bed.

While lying in bed in the morning I could still handle some work on my phone; by the afternoon I felt I had no energy left at all and could only lie under the covers, continuously blowing hot air to induce sweating. As it happened, my son was taking exams these two days and had a lot of time at home, so he could look after me a little.

This whole day and night I spent basically in bed. Apart from getting up to eat and use the toilet, I was asleep in bed the rest of the time. I had not had such a luxurious sleep in a long time. For the past month or more I had often suffered from insomnia. A relative from my hometown had come to Beijing to petition, and was taken back from Beijing by local police and detained. For over a month I had been thinking constantly about how to get him out; on several nights I lay awake all night, and lost several jin in weight. Yesterday was the best sleep I had had in this whole period; being ill, I no longer had the energy to think about all sorts of things.

Getting up this morning, I felt my strength had basically fully recovered, I was no longer chilled, and my sore throat was seventy or eighty percent better. After sleeping a day and a night, my lower back ached from lying down, so I got dressed and got up to work. Middle-aged people really have it hard: stop for one day, and a mountain of work piles up. In my memory, over the last five years, out of 365 days a year, not a single day has passed on which I did no work at all.

For me, falling ill is a luxury, but only when I am ill can I enjoy true rest. One good sleep not only relieved my cold symptoms, it also eased my previous toothache. Over the past month or more, because I had been worrying so much, my body had developed quite a few problems, and I had even gone to a dentist specifically about the toothache. The dentist said, "If everyone's teeth were as good as yours, our dental clinic would have to close." So the reason my teeth ached was also related to the anxiety caused by my relative's trouble.

There are many things we have no power to change. I hope that in the days ahead I can put these down and continue to live my own life well.