It’s been flu, round two around here. Or something with “flu-like symptoms” as the docs like to say when they’re making an educated guess about this kind of thing that ails you.

Went through it once and got better. Better enough to take a hike in a local park. Then a couple days later as I was sitting down to do research for a writing project it hit me again.

The symptoms are slight fever and chills, not enough to make you shiver but just enough to want to pile on the warm blankets. Like the metabolic fires are banked and burning low.

Maybe a little of the flu-like achey joints but not enough to cause real discomfort.

And fatigue, extreme fatigue. It’s exhausting to go to the bathroom and back. You don’t want to read, watch TV — or eat.

For three days I kept myself fueled with a raw egg in the morning and maybe some orange juice. I did try to stay hydrated but I wasn’t losing much water anyway.

Coughing up a little phlegm, but not much and not violently enough to cause serious discomfort.

My son had it also, but the one in the family who suffers most is our poor dog Pearl because we are such poor company.

And there’s the brain fog. Thought slows down and the world seems in a kind of soft focus. It’s not like I’ve seen in people with early dementia (thank God!) but more like a mild intoxication with a rather pleasant light-headed feeling.

I felt a bit unsteady on my feet and when I did have to drive out for something I was aware that I was not in top form and reminded myself to be extra careful. Something early dementia sufferers are not able to do.

Typing suffers too. It goes slowly with many typos. I catch them all and correct — I think. I’ll know when I look back at what little I’ve written in the few times I felt like getting out of bed later.

I notice a lot of it is hitting keys adjacent to what I meant to, omitting letters due to not hitting the keys hard enough, and missing the space bar resulting in run-on phrases.

Mostly I spent my time lying under the covers all day and all night, either sleeping or just lying in a kind of waking dreamlike state. Not uncomfortable at all actually.

And at sometime in that state between waking and dreaming I began to wonder, am I dying?

For the last decade or so flu has killed about 52,000 people a year, mostly the elderly and people with compromised immune systems. Well that’s me now, the elderly part I mean.

And the seductive thought occurred to me, this wouldn’t be a bad way to go. Just to drift off to sleep and never wake up.

Didn’t Socrates say after death either we go someplace and meet all those we loved in life, or we go to eternal dreamless sleep? And if we sleep without dreams, then who among the greatest men alive can say they have had a better rest?

But as the American poet Robert Frost said,

T The woods are lovely, dark and deep,

B But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

A Ad miles to go before I sleep.

And so it appears I must recover and build my strength back, for I too have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep.

— Steve Browne is longtime reporter and contributor to the Marshall Independent