H1N1

Dear Enraptured Readers:

Right there, above, is a picture representation of that lil' virus that has made my life so miserable this last week and a half. It wasn't just debilitating to have on its very own, though - No!
No, I came down with the flu's despair-and-worry inducing symptoms on the very same eve of the day I had some minor surgery on my back.
This was not comfortable. This was not nice. The bloodletting was formidable. Every time I coughed, the my isolation room looked like a Sam Peckinpah movie.

All in all, November was a great month for losing blood. I gave about twenty vials away in the first week (one half for research, the other half, nobly, to science), and about what seemed like half my liquid body weight in the second half. I wonder if this will benefit me in any of the olde ways that bloodletting used to claim? I think I have gained a somewhat otherworldly, delicate pallor.

Thanks to all the staff of Toronto General Hospital who did such a good job of saving my tattered existence. I'm furious, though, that while I was in duress, the staff did an unsigned for lumbar puncture, and an awkward one at that. F^%k.
My back's still aching. Better than from being laid in a pine box, but...still!
Blech.