Mood Watch - 18

A week ago I felt physically fine. Then within 24 hours I got walloped by the fiercest head cold I can recall ever having. “Three days coming, three days with you, three days leaving” is the conventional wisdom about head colds, and it usually holds true with me. This one compressed the first three days into an afternoon. By Tuesday evening I could breathe only through my mouth, and then with so much difficulty I sometimes literally felt as if I were on the verge of suffocation.

It wasn’t quite so bad on Wednesday and Thursday, but it was midday Friday before I felt even slightly like doing any work. Still, as the cold began to subside, my mood and energy level rapidly picked up, and from Saturday until now I’ve been in perfectly good spirits, able to focus on my work (even the stuff that requires creative thought), and very productive.

Needless to say, I slept a lot during the worst of the cold, and as late as Saturday night I slept a good eight hours, and so deeply that I didn’t wake up until after 9 a.m. But that has ended my eleven-day run of hypersomnia. I didn’t feel even slightly tired last night, so I just plowed through a back log of work, and as is my usual practice I’ll try to stay awake today so as to get back on a normal sleep schedule tonight.