Last month I got so sick they are creating a new telethon for it and naming a day after me. What's that? They don't do telethons anymore because no one watches live tv?

Well. That's how sick I was. They are bringing back telethons because of what I went through. And Surge. And Cheers.

There I toiled in my convalescent home, wandering from room to room with a blanket over my head like a New Testament Pharisee, looking for anyone willing to listen to me complain. Our house is not big. Basically I just walked back and forth between the bedroom and the living room, following the dogs who did not want to be near me and my cough.

Oh, this cough. The coughiest of all coughs. So loud it could be seen from space. So painful it woke up my ancestors. (They're all surprisingly really cool with the gay thing. Mostly because they, apparently, are also all gay. Turns out everyone who came before us was gay. Also, they emphatically told me they would, in fact, trade places with us.)

I didn't sleep for days. My body was attacking itself and refusing to let me recover.

Now, you might ask: "Eli, you are married to a hot doctor. He is not out of your league because you are also so funny and cute and we love you. Why did you have to suffer? Couldn't your hot doctor husband prescribe you enough narcotics to kill all of the world's elephants?"

Great question you asked, even if it took you a minute to get to it because you couldn't help but speak truths about me along the way.

That's the same question I asked my hot doctor husband. In those exact words. (Although your version was abridged and didn't include a soliloquy about how much I do around the house.)

The man I married. The one who swore (in front of vendors who were overpaid to serve our wedding guests dry chicken) to always do whatever I ask. And not even just "until death do us part." I specifically demanded the officiant say "forever" because this bitch doesn't let no church or person corner the market on eternal love.

THAT man told me he absolutely would not prescribe me elephant tranquilizers because "the cobbler's family wear wooden shoes" or some nonsense.

He said he's not my doctor and I needed to go see a doctor and have someone run infinity tests on me like they did to E.T. at the end of the movie so they could make an informed drug decision.

And so, unhelped, unloved, and abandoned to the world, I trekked off, through a blizzard, still adorned in Pharisee blanket attire, coughing so violently that cars on the road pulled over to the side in front of me like I was an emergency vehicle.

I entered the urgent care clinic at such-and-such address, gave the nice woman my name, was told a doctor would be prepared to see me at the next full moon, and then sat in a waiting room packed with my medically infirmed compatriots.

It was weeks before I began to heal, but heal I ultimately did with the help of drugs I had to rely on a stranger to give me after a not insignificant amount of begging.

Around the time that I stopped talking in life contingency plans, it began to hit Skylar. The pain. The sore throat. The Pharisee blanket.

The coughiest of all coughs.

The wandering from room-to-room, complaining.

This has been hard on him, I assume. But more importantly, it's been hard on me.

I had to buy earplugs.

Last night he asked me to pour acid in his ears so we could spend the evening clearing every orifice in his head of wax and snot, enough to fill the kitchen sink, twice.

It's all very inconvenient. For me.

I think I preferred it when I was the one who was sick.

~It Just Gets Stranger