Instead of worse as feared, I was better!
I was still sick, mind you, but sick in the sense of, it felt like I had a whole bunch of inflammation and all my coughs were due to irritation/agitation rather than because I was sick.

If I were to describe it, it's like a "sickness due to allergy rather than illness" sensation.
Only, this is due to illness rather than allergies, except it's on the tail end of it.

But it's that feeling.

The feeling of, not really being sick, of having some body actions that look like sick but still being better.

​I am cautiously optimistic!

And won't be better health-wise tomorrow; the two are related, because I'm an hour past my bed time from a date with my girlfriend.

...Worth it​.

When you're sick, time just starts to distort, and you tend to think Tuesday is Monday, Wednesday is Thursday, that you didn't blog when you did, or that you blogged when it turns out you didn't.

That happens even when well, but as someone who is autistic, I am very in tune to schedules, to routines, to rituals. By having a strict, almost never changing regiment, I can keep track of things on point.

Let things start slipping tho...and suddenly, it all starts to blur together, and that's what sickness does. It makes you slip.

Working in that regard will help, though work noticeably sucked.

My dad is genuinely wondering if, due to the power outage we had literally thirty seconds after I had left the computer (thank god I had blogged before then)--which, incidentally, means I can tell you the time to the minute, almost second, as 2:42--fried something in it.

Not sure if he's right or not, but I do know that it quit working.

Since literally everything I do uses the desktop, which requires a monitor, this left me at a loss of activities to partake in. (Haha I know sad, right? I have no life, except the one I've built in a medium invisible without the aid of a computer. Reason why works of fiction like Ghost in the Shell, Sword Art Online, Half Prince, and the like depicting full-dive tech hold such a personal interest for me. I was dreaming of that sort of thing being real since I was a young kid--before I had even seen those shows. We're talking, my dreams of this predate me watching digimon, old. Like, pre-2000s.)

I mean, there's more internet available than just through the desktop, and I can get by just fine without the internet if using the desktop. But everything still goes through the desktop, pretty much.

My phone can connect to the wifi...about half the time. Usually, the half I don't want it to, it'll connect; the half I need it to, it won't. Plus the screen's small enough that it's not very convenient for most things I'd want to use it for. It also clogs the phone up with junk. My phone was purchased strictly for work and family and other such incredibly personal-by-the-definition-of-PERSONS uses.

While I've laxed that somewhat, I deliberately still hold true to it to a large extent. I don't want my phone to have anything on it, except for what is strictly necessary for me to use. I don't want my phone to be used for anything except for work and family and honorary-family, pretty much. (Extending this to include a website was as far as I'm pretty much willing to go there.)

That's what I see my phone as being for. Plus, having only a...is it a 1G or 2G plan?...I do my best to limit data usage.
I used to have a warning at 50 MB and limit at 100 MB. That's loosened to be a warning at 100 MB and limit of like 300 MB, which is my absolute limit. (Thankfully, I don't use my phone often so even a HUGE spike caused by multiple failed attempts at downloading skype before the final successful one only brought me up to like 150--tripping the alarm, but not the shutdown.)

Of course, when on wifi, not a problem, except it's inconsistent in connecting to wifi as I said--and even when I do. Sometimes that's not a good thing, because the aforementioned site that I'll use on my phone? At our home wifi, that site is blocked. We've used the same setup blocking that site since 2009, when it was first blocked. (I got around that limit first by making use of computers at school, then computers at college, then a friend told me about the magic of proxies, and then when the site switched to https, that was enough where I could, via an indirect method, access it. Which is one of the reasons I am so obsessive about not closing my tabs in my browser. If they got closed and couldn't be recovered...I could be, permanently, locked out from accessing the site.)

Every time tech people have brought up replacing the setup, my eyes have lit up, because I know that if the right thing was replaced, then that ridiculously obsolete block would be removed. But alas, each time, the idea is shot down because of--what else?--money; what we have is the cheapest setup possible, so it remains blocked.

So my phone doesn't do me much good, most of the time.
And with my laptop long-since kaput, that leaves me with only one reliably consistent internet connection.
Said connection doesn't need to be on the internet to be useful.
I have steam, so all of my steam games can be played offline.
I have a whole bunch of reference images stored on the desktop for art, and while offline I can't get new ones, I can still obtain the old ones rather reliably.
I have a whole bunch of things I can do.

With the computer.

Without it...

...Well, I pretty much just took the chance to do catching up on Reader's Digest. I was only at the very beginning of the October article (the December/January article is already here, so I was a solid two articles behind), and got most of the way through it when my parents got home and I reported the problem.

I managed to get the problem fixed promptly by holding my dad's hunger hostage, pointing out that I can't do anything about his eating while the monitor's not working, so I forced him to fix it before he could eat. (My mom called me out on this, and to be fair, she wasn't exactly wrong to do so, but dangit, I had been without access to the computer for four hours at that point, when I am still 'grounded' due to illness, with nothing to do...with a mind like mine, that is literally torture. As you may recall when I outlined the absolute most cruel torture possible.)

The new monitor is taking some adjustment time, but overall, things seem to be working. The glitch with the civ3 editor program is even fixed now!

...Now.

What I was doing, completely have forgotten that.

​But it was fixed regardless!

Mind you, I'm not fully recovered, but I am back to, once more, recovering. Again.

Yes I know, I've said that before, only to relapse later, but I am cautiously optimistic that this time for real, it'll start to heal and stay healed.

Believe me, nobody's more annoyed at how debilitating the illness has been than I am, because I know all too perfectly well and good exactly what it means. Basically, it's dragged me down, and all I can do to stop it is...tough it out. Wait. Try different treatments, but ultimately, be at the mercy of time to just. Get better.

And I hate having no control over how I am doing.

​If I am sucking, I prefer to suck because I just suck. Not because some illness is dragging me down.

Doctor's orders, rather than parent's, but the effect is still the same regardless.
I am still sick.
I had a fever of 102.2 yesterday, and today kept a fever albeit not as severe as that one was.

The doctor couldn't tell if it was viral or bacterial, and pretty much split the difference between the two, prescribing an antibiotic as a "just in case" (which I hate the thought of, but given how much I've been sick...screw it I'll take it anyway), plus a cough suppressant to be taken as-needed.

Now, me being sick means that I am making myself be limited in obligations, and it just so happens that both existing obligations ended at the same time--so now I am left with.

No work.
No games. (Because the Civ 3 editor is still broke, in spite of my computer suffering from what seems like a half-restart where most things got closed down but a few remained open.)
No art, tho this may be the one I am closest to fixing.
And no writing, due to a lack of inspiration/desire to write.

I've got nothing now except for boredom killers, aside from a singular activity; dates with my girlfriend, which aside from being boredom killers, are also​ health rejuvenators. In a day I would otherwise be miserable, going on a date with my girlfriend livens me up, giving me a certain source of vigor.

It is also a nice, convenient way for my girlfriend to monitor my health/condition, and overhear conversations relevant thereto that happen in my house, conversations I would otherwise be prone to forget or even totally leave unheard. I genuinely, legitimately think that without going on dates with my girlfriend, I'd have died by now.

Especially since I am not exactly one who takes the best care of myself at any stage, even when healthy. But with prodding and poking from my girlfriend (which is also impossible to avoid--tho I wouldn't be inclined to try anyway--given that my girlfriend can see me), I am set on the right path to recovery.

Aside from my girlfriend staying on top of my health, there's also the obvious mental/emotional benefits. I never am smiling more, I am never more happy, than when I am with my girlfriend, and that joy, that glee, gives a certain sense of instant recovery, motivating me to get better, and making me immediately feel better.

Of course.
It's not something we can consistently schedule (which is why it's always so important to me when we can spend time together, that we do), and to some extent, I worry about...well, remember when I blogged a long time ago about how I was worried there was a chance I could feel smothered no matter how small? (Fortunately, that has not once come up.) I have a fear, no matter how ridiculous it may be, that they could end up smothered by me.

But it's something that I well and truly do enjoy.

I probably had a train of thought with this, but speaking of girlfriend time...
​...That's what I'm headed off for, so if I was going somewhere and had more to say, WHOOPS, I forgot it. Oh well!

I already knew it was bad, but I didn't know it was this bad.

I got a temperature of 102.2. I also have achy, sore muscles as well, which I believe is more symptoms confirming that I am sick with a very, very bad virus.

Yeah, could be bacterial, or worse, both bacterial and viral, but I'm pretty sure these are hallmarks of a very bad viral infection.

All the same.

Plan is for me to take Tylenol before going to bed, for me to sleep out on the couch, propped up, and to go to the doctor tomorrow. I am siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiick right now. Not life-threatening yet, but bad enough where regardless of whether I feel better tomorrow, I need a doctor visit anyway.

Speaking of which, I ironically do feel better, aside from the temperature. I'm coughing far, far less than I was this morning, and while I still get a runny nose, it's not clogged up as it was before. My throat is far less raw, and overall, I mostly feel okay, except for the obvious giveaways that I am very much not okay.

I think that come tomorrow, I'll probably be okay.
I think that come tomorrow, I'll be feeling better.
I am certainly hoping as much, obviously.

But if not...yeah.

​I am bad, bad off right now.

HARD.
It's bad.
I think it's purely viral; it feels exclusively in my throat, maybe a bit in the head even--the polar opposite of where it was, in the chest exclusively.

I am still coughing.
Enough to turn my throat raw, even.
Leave me even more miserable than I have been before.
But I think it's different than before.

I've still been urged to go to the hospital.
I'm somewhat pessimistic that they'll diagnose me any differently than my own self-diagnosis.
I don't have a fever; I checked.
But most of my symptoms feel more virus-like now, rather than bacteria-like.
There IS that coughing, and some is in the chest, but it doesn't feel like bacterial infection of the chest, if that makes sense.

If I can get a family member to go with me, sure, I'll go to the hospital and have them there to talk to the doctor but I'm sure not going to go on a trip alone which I know if I went by myself would be a waste.

Last time I went solo, I knew it wouldn't be a waste, and it wasn't.
This time if I went solo, I feel it would be a waste.
Heck, even with someone else, it might be a waste, but I just kinda know that without someone else it's guaranteed to be a waste.

I feel awful.
I feel terrible.
​But I am going to find a way to get through this.

So I was gonna do some work on my scenario today.
Was.

And then.

"ERROR: Could not locate Civilization III: Play the World. Please make sure the game has been properly installed and try again."

In spite of.
The game working fine. And being exactly where it should.
The folders being fine. And being exactly where they should.
NOTHING, even remotely, having changed. Absolutely zilch. I did nothing, changed nothing, made no alterations whatsoever.
But the editor which I edit the scenarios in.
Can't find the game!
In spite of it.
Being in a folder.
INSIDE OF THE GAME.
It literally has stopped finding something which it wouldn't be able to exist without.

​I'm pretty miffed.

That means I did nothing except go on a date with my girlfriend, pretty much.

​Which is just about the most productive use of my time possible in my mind~ <3