What a fever will do

I created this graph for my benefit, really, just to get a look at the roller coaster ride of fever that has been my life lately. When I look at it, what surprises me most of all is that I can still create a graph in the first place, since it's not something I've had to do in quite some time, as in when maybe I was wearing a pink oxford button down with my initials monogrammed on the pocket, accessorized with a grosgrain ribbon pulled through the collar and tied in a bow around the neck. A time otherwise known as my Senior year in high school, when I was made to study analytical reasoning.

What surprises me also is that there is only one time I've taken my temperature in the past five days where the result was the normal 98.6. That was when I got home from the minor emergency clinic late Sunday night/Monday morning. I've been to that clinic twice and a specialist Wednesday, am filled to next week with antibiotics given through IV, a gigantic shot in my rear and two horse pills daily, but still this infection has the gall to stick around.

There's a battle raging inside me and when the fever gets like it was Wednesday night, I fear that I am losing brain cells, and not in a way where I can sigh and attribute the vanished thought to some long forgotten but over-the-top night from days gone by. No, this is brain cell loss through cooking. This infection is that iconic This is your brain on drugs commercial. The eggs are my brain cells sizzling on the hot surface of my very own bacterial infection. And that's turning me into a different person, a person who creates a graph of her fever spikes and posts it on her website.