It was Thursday night, and I was at a gathering of nerds that I host with Bill Prady and Felicia Day. A lot of my favorite people were there (that’s the whole point) including Hank and John Green, who were in town on unrelated business.
When he came into the room, I hugged John Green tightly. “It is so good to see you!”
He hugged me back. “You too!”
I stepped back and looked at him. John’s taller than me, and I always forget that because he’s usually sitting down in his videos.
“So, what’s new with you?” I said.
“I have strep throat,” he said. It was very casual, like “I am wearing Vans.” What I heard was, “Chopper, sic balls.”
Oh. That’s not right. What I heard was, “I have infected you with murder death muwahahahaha you never saw my nefarious plan coming, puny mortal!”
“Wait. Like. Now? You have it right now? And you just hugged me?” A cold panic began in my abdomen.
“I’ve been on antibiotics for four days,” he said, “I’m not contagious.”
“I sure hope you aren’t,” I said.
Fast forward six days. My throat hurts so much I can barely swallow. I have a headache that won’t respond to any pain meds. I have chills in my body, and aches in my joints. Last night, I kept waking up every few minutes, because I felt like I was suffocating.
I really hope it’s just allergies, or exhaustion because I flew to Toronto to work on Saturday and came home last night. Maybe it’s a combination of both … but there’s this doctor in my head who is even more terrifying than WebMD, and she’s telling me that I have strep and probably a mono flare up and did I mention that I’m going to Ohio on Sunday to speak at Miami University?
Yeah. So I’m trying not to panic. If I don’t feel significantly better tomorrow morning, I’m going to the doctor and demanding some sort of Bruce Banner treatment to kill this thing, because I don’t have time for this.
Silver lining: if I do have strep, I got it from John Green, which means that I probably got infected with his writing skill, too. So look out, world. Here I come.
