A plague on both your houses

I realise now that I am one of those people who are prone to tonsillitis, but I have managed to miss this over the years in my search for more obscure illnesses from which I am suffering. Hypochondria is one of my least attractive features, but I actually can’t help it if I am pre-disposed to getting weird symptoms that I have to google and then it turns out that they are fatal. 

Anyway, I had tonsillitis (I will laugh in your face if you call it a sore throat) first when I was 19- I was on holiday in France with my family who were uncaring to say the least, so I just sat in my room and facebook flirted with boys for sympathy.  A year later, I was in Paris and it came back; a doctor on the Boulevard St Germain charged me 70 euros to take my top off and gave me some paracetamol.  This time I have had it twice in a month and as a result of some complications (from being happy and carefree and not maintaining my usual constant vigilance towards googling my health) I am sick sick sick.  The less said about it the better, but the long and the short of it is that I’m convalescing at home.

Being an independent, post-modernist ironic joke of a woman in my mid to late 20s, I realise I should be doing this at my flat, but I am nothing if not relentlessly realistic, and I know it would have been about 2 hours after the first of my flatmates got home from work before I was saying it was fiiiiiine to have a drink, and yes I probably would love a Marlboro light because you know you really can’t smoke in hospitals, they’re pretty strict on that, and actually I’m very much ok now so if I don’t take these antibiotics tomorrow maybe my stomach won’t feel so shit and I can go to that party on Saturday. My flatmates wouldn’t have pressurised me by the way, I just have no will power. And I really don’t want to feel like this anymore.

At home, at least two sisters will be scandalised, disappointed and possibly stop thinking of me as their ultimate role model -footage not found- if they see me hoofing down the codeine with a white wine chaser. 

It also means that I am under my mother’s tender loving care. This is exceptionally annoying, but I’m almost certain that for once this is mostly my fault not hers. I am exhausted and sleeping most of the time, but am finally feeling just human enough to wake up to argue and be rude. I am eating nursery food.  Shepherds’ pie, macaroni cheese, boiled eggs, soups, yoghurts...  You may be surprised that all of these are suitable for someone with such a tender, recently compromised throat.  You may be thinking of crispy mashed potato with the pie, or crunchy bits of bubbling cheese on top of the pasta; rest assured, the way my mother makes the above, they are all the same consistency.

She is currently whipping up a broccoli and stilton soup whilst listening to The Archers.  Sister number 4 has just emerged from her study leave pit and come thumping down the stairs shouting, ‘What are all the bad smells? Why does everything smell of manure?’ 

I’m not sure lunch is going to go down so well. I can’t wait to go back to work.