When you’re this sick, time ceases to be linear. My "day" is no longer measured by the sun rising or setting, but by the four-hour intervals between doses of Tylenol. The 4 AM window is the hardest because the distractions of the world have gone to sleep. My inbox is quiet. Social media is a graveyard of yesterday’s memes. It’s just me, my pounding headache, and the rhythmic, wheezing soundtrack of my own lungs.
There is a strange clarity that comes with a fever. It’s a "fever dream" logic where the most mundane things feel profound. I spent twenty minutes staring at a half-empty glass of electrolyte drink, thinking about how beautiful the neon orange hue looked against the moonlight. When your body is fighting a war internally, your external perspective shifts. You realize how much of your "normal" life is built on the fragile assumption of health. The Brain Fog Chronicles i wrote this at 4am sick with covid
Successfully making it to the kitchen to refill the water pitcher without passing out. When you’re this sick, time ceases to be linear
Yet, there’s an urge to document this. Why? Maybe because being sick with COVID in the mid-2020s feels different than the flu of the past. There’s a lingering cultural weight to it. Even though the world has "moved on," being back in the grip of those familiar symptoms—the loss of taste, the crushing fatigue—feels like being pulled back into a collective trauma we all agreed to stop talking about. Survival in the Small Things My inbox is quiet
But for now, in the blue light of my laptop screen, I’m just going to sit with the silence. I’m going to acknowledge that being sick is a vulnerable, human, and exhausting experience. And then, hopefully, I’m going to try to sleep. Are you currently riding out a fever, or
The moment the fever breaks and the shivering stops, leaving you in a puddle of sweat that feels, oddly, like a triumph.
Finding a "cool spot" on the pillow that lasts for more than thirty seconds.