It started off as either a bug bite or an infected hair follicle.

Blood work hasn’t come back yet so no need to scroll to the bottom for a big reveal.

Even I don’t know what happened. All I know is I had an angry welt on my leg followed by a fever.

Self medicating ensued. A week of so much Tylenol, winter hats, wet sweaty clothes, and back again. Each day I thought would be the final day. It was just a fever.

HA!

The welts spread to an all-body situation. Clearly time to call the doctor. The pharmacist handed me antibiotics and I scarfed back my first one right there and then like I was a junkie in need of a hit.

Took another week for everything to simmer down.

Two weeks of feverish out of control angry welts. Still not sure what that was all about. It has left me creaky and weak. It reminded me of the stages of health I created for myself with the whole cancer fiasco a few years ago.

THE STAGES OF HEALTH

Stage 1: Healthy enough to exercise and then going to exercise

Stage 2: Healthy enough to exercise but not exercising and feeling guilty about it.

Stage 3: Not feeling healthy enough to exercise and not feeling guilty about it.

Stage 4: Exercise isn’t even an option. Just trying to stay awake.

I made it to Stage 4 during the chemo and radiation of treatments, then crawled myself back to Stage 1, which took A YEAR.

This fever brought me BACK to Stage 3. A two week fever over probably something as trivial as an infected hair follicle?!?!!??!

Life is tender business. It really is true when they say if you don’t have your health, you don’t have anything.

The fever presented me with a few gifts.

Gift 1: Stopped self loathing. Stopped the simmering irritation of not having the bod of a teenager. Somewhere in my brain, links formed in my teenage years about body image have been fused/knotted/stuck together really tight. The fever, I hope, burned some of that out of my brain. A fever-induced lobotomy. Because now I look in the mirror and think “No fever… standing up… amazing human.”

Gift 2: Book reading. When I am ill, my creativity goes silent. The other day was International Typewriter Day and I didn’t even blog about it. That is how sick I was. I didn’t even type on my typewriter. I just read books. Here’s what I read:

I haven’t read a Danielle Steel book since my early teens. I had forgotten how much the reader is spoon fed all the details. No need to put two and two together or to find out what happens next. She will tell you. Over and over again. It’s almost like mansplaining.

People go crazy for this book. I thought it was ridiculous. It was written by a man who clearly has no concept of social obligation or energy management. I would like this book to be written by a tired mommy. The fact that he was so dismissive of half the population and focused on his myopic view that everyone has all day to do anything and all the energy to do it INFURIATED me. Then I had to calm down because I didn’t want my temperature to rise. James Clear can bite me. But if he does, he could get welts.

Between life and death there is a library. That’s how this book starts and it is a beautiful masterpiece of wonderful. I liked everything about this book, from concept to execution. Reading it could actually change your life with way Life of Pi can change your life… really. Worth it!

Aw, look at that. I just used an exclamation mark. I’m clearly on the mend.

Before all this happened, I listed a 12-month subscription of the best of the best Paris Letters in my shop. One delivered once a month to anyone who could use fun mail. Of course I have been too sick to tell you about it. I created it because many people were buying single letters and asking me to send one per month. So, I whipped up a listing of it.

Subscribe over at the shop. Makes a great gift. As does life after a fever. Speaking of books… a few summer reads to slake your cravings for Paris…