Though the fever that bore through my body at 2:00 a.m. finally broke, I am now shivering almost uncontrollably.  Having been in my bed for 5 days, I have strength for very little. Writing helps, despite the coughing and the feeling of hills and mountains across the nape of my neck (not one swollen lymph node, but at least six). My eyes are burning as they run in an out of haziness. The last days of summer and I have some sort of plague! It is the luck of late, but it will assuredly turn around soon. A visit to the doctor is certainly in order.

It’s the dreams that always get me with fever. I lose complete sense of reality. I have no idea whether the more usual dreams have actually occurred or not. Did I have a conversation with someone about the film “Original Sin”? Or did I dream it? Did someone call me with news of a new love? Or was it a nightmare?

Once when I was a little girl, I woke up and started running though the house screaming that a little boy was chasing me on an elephant. I collapsed in the hallway and was taken to the emergency room with a temperature of 104º.

After days, these visions are the children of an idle brain.

Such are the battles I fight while sweating in my sheets, falling in and out of sleep. Each dream happens with such purity and each actual moment is caught in a nebulous induced by my failing health. I check my phone often, looking for confirmation of what’s authentic and what’s not, as though somehow there would be a record of these moments. (I probably sound like a loon. It’s just days of sickness and lack of sleep, nightmares, dreams, touches of clarity.)

What’s worse, is that I have been unable to study for my exam. When I’m exhausted I cannot focus on questions like: Philip has twice as many salamanders as Matt. If Philip gives Matt 10 of his salamanders, he will have half as many as Matt. How many salamanders do Philip and Matt have together?

But since I have the question in front of me let’s try to solve it now (this makes me crazy, not the wavering grasp on the tangible). Perhaps we can all take a trip back to jr. high school mathematics. I’d say: let p=Philip’s salamanders and m=Matt’s so,

p=2m.

Philip’s a generous guy so, p-10=1/2(m+10).

I now have to solve for p and m

2m-10=1/2(m+10)

4m-20=m+10

3m=30,m=10

so p+m=30.

The total salamanders together is 30. (I think.)

How incredibly embarrassing if this is wrong (remember I’m sick), but since it’s a CAT I won’t find out until I finish the online exam, which I’m not going to do now, because it’s a nightmare existing in my elusive reality.

I’ve probably just set myself up for some sort of twisted school dream. I have a recurring one that I’ve failed geometry and cannot graduate high school. When I wake up and remember I’ve already graduated college, the sense of relief is palpable…