Today I turned 42. I didn’t sleep, as I had started coughing an awful lot and I had what I thought was a fever, with accompanying fever dreams and general confusion. Based on the way I had felt the night before, I hadn’t booked a day trip to an island or beach for today, as was our plan, and the way I felt this morning confirmed it was the right decision.
Jenn got a thermometer from reception and we confirmed that I did indeed have a fever. For some reason, I currently had an appetite so I was able to eat breakfast.
So then Jenn went to the pool and I tried to to sleep. I think I managed to sleep a little bit because she came back hours later and I thought that less time had passed. But it was not restful.
After I gave up sleeping I watched movies. Though almost every channel in Brazil is in Portuguese (or Spanish with Portuguese subtitles), a couple movie channels will have some movies in English with Portuguese. That was lucky because in many of our hotels we couldn’t get the Smart TV apps to work.
Jenn went out and grabbed lunch. She was still not feeling 100% so she had Burger King at the mall. She brought me back various things, including a large bottle of juice. I have rarely devoured a Subway sub so eagerly. Whatever this was, it was not affecting my appetite.
My fever seemed to abate eventually. At some point I realized I had eaten most of the food but not consumed very much of the juice. So I drank it. A little bit later, I had a coughing fit and threw up the juice. I hoped it was the cough and not a new symptom (and that proved to be true).
I had a very mediocre chicken soup for dinner, because eating chicken soup when I’m sick is how I was raised.
The hotel made me a cake for my birthday but I only ate a little bit of it. It was very nice of them but, even with an appetite despite my illness, it was still way too big.