I am sick. This is why.

So, I've been beastly sick all week.

I have come to the thinking that, given current or only recently past events (whatever they were), my perspective on the past is skewed enough that I can't properly compare what was with what is. I can have a rough idea of what was, and I can live in what is, and I may have a glimmer of an idea of what will be, but that's about it. So, while I loosely recall labeling a period in Sheridan as, "The sickest I've ever been," and I remember thinking on Wednesday, "This is the sickest I've ever been," I honestly can't tell you which was worse, or if there were others in between those two. Fortunately, I am not especially bothered by this.

One of my roommates was honestly convinced that I was going to die Wednesday night. She threatened to kill me in the morning if I did so. I told her that she'd be justified, and I wouldn't even seek legal retribution if she did.

This started with the flu shot. Predictably enough, I got a little flu the weekend after said shot. But my body proceeded to turn that into a little pneumonia. The sleep schedule for night students is mildly heinous, but usually not all that wretched. We go to sleep somewhere between the hours of midnight and 0200, and we're expected to be awake somewhere between 0800 and 1000*. But it's fairly normal to have some little two- or three- hour project in the middle of that, around. Those days, you sleep for two or three hours, get up and get into whatever uniform is needed, take care of what needs to be done, change back into sweats, and exhaustedly return to your rack.

*It should be noted, this is actually a little nicer than the rest of the base has it - they're on the 2200-0500 schedule. Mind, outside noise is secured during that time. Night students just condition themselves to sleep through nearly everything but a knock at the door and their cell phone. Loud roommates are a curse to them that have them; mine by contrast are lovely.

You can survive off this. You can even get a fair amount of learning and work done off this. But you will be emotionally ragged after about four days of it. You start breaking down. And then you start breaking down physically. You can feel that it's happening, but there's not a whole lot you can do about it. I knew I was sick, that there was junk in my lungs, and it was just getting worse. This week, I was skipping everything else I had to do (bare bones schedule: sleep, shower, class, repeat) hoping to hold the system together until I could rest on the weekend. If I can...just...make it...to the weekend...

I didn't make it to the weekend.

Now, you're asking, why didn't you go to medical before this? Because I knew that if anybody with a stethoscope and a modicum of expertise got a listen to my lungs, they'd slap me a Sick In Quarters chit before I could blink. And while that SOUNDS nice, if I take a night off right now, I likely lose my class.

My program takes a 2.5 year electronics program and stuffs it into just under 5 months. The result is that we cover about a week's worth of material every night. A new class starts every other week, and for the most part stays together until graduation. If you missed a week of class and couldn't make it up, your school administration would probably bump you back to a later class, too. But it's hard to start in a new class. You don't know anybody, and unfortunately, they already don't like you.

It's not just your imagination. Unless your gpa is one of the top in the class, you get along well with people, and you're fairly attractive, we subconsciously resent anyone new coming in. Because this is hard, and we've been through a lot together, and who's this guy who thinks he can just ride on how far we've made it? It stinks, it's irrational, but it's there. This philosophy starts in Boot Camp - you band together when everything's against you, and regard anything from the outside with suspicion. When you're forced to let it in, you don't really let it in, don't trust it, for a long time

So you try very hard to stay with your band. I am not the first one in my class to get sick. There were a good five of us who had some nature of the bug, one of the guys had a worse cough than mine, but if we could rest up enough, and our bodies could fight it off, we'd make it through this and still be with the class, still be among friends.

But I'm also trained for taking orders. So the two hit a compromise on my stubborn side - if three people, one of them outranking me*, told me to go to medical, I would. Well...my buddy Adam was first. Then my big Army brother (it's not that I forget that he technically outranks me. It's that I forget he's a possible factor in adventures like this.) Then one of the girls in my class that I really look up to. Well, blast.

*There's a difference between outranking me and being in authority over me. Students at my school are everything from E-2 to E-6, but because we're all in student status, the only ones with any authority over me are my class leaders.

Mind you, that day, I'd been informed that I looked like a)hell (multiple variations on this theme), b) the living dead, c) grilled ****, and d)"Not Mumm-Ra, but one of his acolytes." (This last required some research. I am not a better person for the experience.) High fever, ridiculously high heart rate, massive chills, and I could barely stand up. Yes, I'm still going to class, why do you ask?

So I came home from class around 2000. Went to medical the next morning (because the only option the night before was the ER, and while my roommate disagreed, I didn't think I needed THAT). And now I'm SIQ. Sighhhh.