As if making it up the Smith Stairs on a normal day weren’t hard enough, the pleasure of contracting a “flu-like illness” makes it ten times worse.
It’s very difficult not being home for your mom to wait on your every beckon. There is no mom to come take your temperature and bring you soup in bed. She isn’t there to comfort you either. You’re an adult, and doing anything becomes more difficult. You can only hope you don’t pass out on your way to Seasons, and can make it through a meal without sweating out your entire body weight of water.
Besides sweating in Seasons, sleeping becomes virtually impossible. When your body cannot decide on what temperature it wants to be, you get zero sleep. You go from being an icicle unable to retain heat, to being drenched head-to-toe in sweat, as if you just went for a casual swim. Your comfort zone is taken away and replaced with the need to now shower twice a day.
To top it all off, losing your voice will make for a miserable week. You become a social outcast, as you are unable to talk—and when you can, it sounds like a mouse is being crushed to death. You know it is bad when your roommate has to call health and wellness to book you appointment because you can’t talk, or people ask you to stop talking because your voice is just about the most annoying thing on Earth.
Perhaps the most difficult aspect is schoolwork. You have no desire to leave Netflix or even more so, your bed. With the lack of motivation, you manage to finish two series on Netflix and watch four movies, all within a two-day span. This then leaves you with a pile of make-up work that needs to be completed ASAP—a surefire way to keep your social life non-existent for the rest of the week. With the help of your trusty Dayquil and Nyquil, you manage to infect only one person, and finally become healthy enough to be a real human bean again.
To sum it all up all up, the Bentley Flu is the worst thing ever. It makes you want to sleep 24/7, leaves you with zero motivation, and no voice. The only upside is that it passes within three days and then you can resume your daily life to a normal-ish degree. Bentley Flu, we hate you.