A Fever Miracle

This is my first entry of the month, and the first morning that I feel almost back to my usual self…with one important shift. My blood pressure returned to normal yesterday for the first time in over 6 months.

I have been sick with a vicious flu the past week, which struck me Saturday and caused me to lose my voice on my evening shift.

I didn’t want to have to call in sick Sunday, but I knew I had no choice, although I still gave my supervisor the option of my coming in if they really needed me. Thank God she didn’t take me up on that. I thought it would be only a day off, but she cautioned me to take the Monday too if I really needed it.

I thought I would all be over by Tuesday and I could to enjoy a little down time, but no! By Tuesday my mind was playing tricks on me, and I felt I had to reach out to someone and let them know how sick I was, in case anything happened.

I called Chaya to let Kadir know that he should not come this week, and to my surprise, she told me that Kadir had taken sick the same weekend, and it occurred to me that we might have picked something up at the Granville Cinema when we went to see Babel on Wednesday, as our symptoms were similar. Could it have been a virus from Morocco?

I didn’t want my family members or anyone coming over to take care of me, and so I didn’t call anyone else, but short of going to the doctor I needed to talk to someone, and so emailed my friend A in Santa Cruz.

I had been struggling to sweat out the fever, but resorted to Tylenol on Sunday night. I explained everything to her. She suggested I “embrace the fever” and explained it thus:


The good news is, a fever is a very good thing. Kicks the doors of
your immune system wide open, stimulated cortico-steroid production,
and basically is your own built-in radiation treatment, inasmuch as it
"cooks" the sickest cells/foreign invaders.

My son was terrible sick with asthma as a tyke (from about 18 months to
8yrs old), so much so that we had to buy a machine to help him breathe
during crises and often feared for his life. Quel ordeal, I tell you.
Anyway, the point--and I do have one--is, his asthma "trigger" was
viral colds. Not animals or exercise or any of the other usual
suspects (except prawns, which by the way you should NEVER eat because
shrimp are bottom-feeders---terrible toxic allergens), but at the end
of an cold, he'd go into bronchial distress. EXCEPT when the cold came
with a fever.

Colds with fever, it seemed, were sufficient to trigger his own adrenal
glands to make whatever auto-immune substances worked to keep his
bronchioles functioning properly.

So, embrace your fever. Even now your body is making WONDERFUL cells
and antibodies---just what the heavenly doctor ordered.

Okay, this advice was great in a New Agey abstract sort of way…but the ordeal of doing it was far from easy.

By day 2, I realized I was going into a full detox.

I slept in half hour stretches, during which time my brain was trying to solve some abstract puzzle related to work that it could not/would not complete and so kept recycling through the same attempts, hour after hour after hour.

During the night I would fall asleep and wake thinking two or three hours had passed, but no…only 20 minutes had passed and I had to get up and pace and then go through the whole thing again. I was reminded of old films I had seen of someone “Kicking the habit” and going through the DT’s. I felt my body was going to snap, my mind explode.

In the first nations tradition you do this kind of thing in a sweat lodge, with full knowledge that it is a battle with demons. But I was like 5 years old again and in fetal position, and if my mother was still alive, I am sure I would have called her!

After the first night of this, I thought I had broken through, but no, the second night was even worse. I kept thinking of my bottle of Tylenol and whenever the thought of that came up the thought, “Embrace your fever” popped up and counter balanced it. The two are not compatible, and I knew in my heart of hearts that I had to sweat this one out med-free.

I had eaten nothing all this time, and drank only purified water, sometimes mixed with orange juice and by Wednesday evening realized I was still not ready to return to work on Thursday. I hated to tell my supervisor, but had no choice.

I thought, “What I need is two weeks of solid fasting until my appetite returns naturally” but I knew I had to return to work by Friday, and so Thursday morning, I woke up sweat soaked, showered, and headed down to a lovely little cheap all day breakfast place on Denman where I broke my fast with poached eggs, fresh fruit and whole wheat toast…I could only manage a sip of black coffee.

My knees were shaking all the way there, and I felt completely drained of energy, and in fact didn’t think my bowels were going to hold until I returned home. I stopped at Safeway on the return to refill my water jug, and then like a weightless wraith on stilts, feeling very out of this world, slowly, slowly paced home.

After resting an hour at home, it occurred to me that now would be a perfect time to check my blood pressure, and so I bundled up and walked ever so slowly to the Burrard Street Clinic Pharmacy across from St. Paul’s.

For the past 6 months, I have been dismayed to see continued way over the top blood pressure readings, and my hematologist has advised me of this on every visit. She cautioned me to see my doctor, but I knew I would have to go through the high cholesterol blood tests and that this was not the problem, as my diet is very good these days.

I braced myself as I inserted my arm into the device and let the reading take its course.

I could barely believe my eyes, when I saw the readings.

My blood pressure had finally dropped to normal.