Friday, August 20, 2010

Monolukeleosis

Well friends, It's been a bit of a sad week here at Roots in the Sky. Luke Williams, your kindly curator of all things simultaneously aerial and subterranean has come down with the Cootie Fever (mononucleosis, in layman's terms). Here is an image of a man who supposedly has the condition:


Fig. 1

I'll tell you this much, that man does NOT have the same thing I have. I'll tell you why.
1. His neck is not bulging out on the sides due to his tonsils deciding they must free themselves of their throaty prison.
2. "Soreness," "Reddening (x2, apparently)," "Swelling," and "White Patches" just don't cut it as descriptive terms to put under Throat and Tonsils here. I haven't swallowed without wincing since Saturday, and from the look on my mother's face when she snuck a peek at my tonsils, she didn't see white patches. She saw multi-dimensional, ghostly abscesses made from the nightmares she had as a small child. But nobody really uses that archaic swallowing mechanism anyways, right? It's become as useless a part of the modern human body as the spleen. Ha! Spleens are funny. Good thing it wouldn't make any sense for this sickness to have anything to do with..... What's that you say?
3. Mono can do what to my spleen?
4. Who is this creep anyway? Especially with that exposed brain on his forehead. He reminds me of Krang, only Krang's brain was closer to where most people's spleens are. That would've made things complicated if he had ever gotten mono.
5. Actually, I think this guy's subtle yet diabolical stare is more descriptive of mono than any of the text-and-pointy-lines describing the symptoms. For the past week, I believe my throat has been thinking the same thing Mr. Mono here is thinking: "Silly mortal, mere steroids and incrementally greater doses of hydrocodone cannot destroy me.... I have become... unstoppable...."

If I were to contribute my own visual representation of the "Main Symptoms of Infectious Mononucleosis" To wikipedia (which is where I found the former image), I would make the following changes:

Fig. 2
Now, I know I'm being a bit melodramatic about my illness. Once this sore throat from hell is gone, supposedly I'll just be tired all the time. 

Fig. 3 ("It's tired in here")