Chewin in the Chung

Things we have learned over the last five days. I am of course using ¡¥we¡¦ rather liberally, since the wiser and more common sense-laden readers of this blog probably knew these things already:
The two things that swell up in your neck and hurt to touch or maybe even hurt when you turn your head are lymph glands, also called lymph nodes. If they are swollen or painful, it most likely means you have an infection (could also be cancer though). If you are a stubborn fool like me who hates to get pumped full of antibiotics for every little damn sickness, well good for you. But you will want to note that if you have multiple lymph nodes that are red and painful, this is an indication that your body¡¦s immune system has its hands full with the nasty bug in question, and is probably getting ready to escalate the conflict- (Fine! If the lymphatic system can¡¦t handle this, I¡¦ll just BURN the infection out!). Such a course of events may lead you to be driving around in a feverish haze trying to find a clinic because your usual doctor is not open, and Poker is supposed to start at your house in three and a half hours. So now we know.

And speaking of fevers. My dearest wife Cynthia came back from China (she never did get a visa to Kazakhstan), and promptly hit a 40¢X degree fever Saturday night. There are a couple of weird things about this: 1) She had no symptoms other than the fever, 2) She was fine yesterday (the day after) no fever, no problems. 3) She said this has already happened to her a couple of times in China. 4) While she was burning up at 40¢X (104¢XF), she was entirely lucid. If I get a fever that high I turn into the Zombie Hulk of Lethargy, 202cm and 100kg of mumbling couch-ridden incoherence.