Awesome Dad

Since arriving in China this weekend I have been suffering from Manflu, which deserves far more sympathy than it gets. I mean, when bird flu and swine flu occurred, there were fears of pandemics happening with millions of deaths resulting. Governments were panicked into rushing out vaccines and schools were closed! However, when Manflu reveals itself? No reaction what-so-ever.

It has been years since I have any kind of cold or flu. I am usually very careful but somehow, on my way to China, this crippling disease found me. By the time I landed in Shanghai I was already suffering a burning sensation in the throat and my nose was running. Becoming trapped in a elevator, at the airport with a claustrophobic midget driver, didn’t help either.

By the time I arrived at my hotel the coughing had started. This where it all goes wrong for me. I have had pneumonia a few times and my lungs suffer badly whenever I get a virus like this. So, I went straight to bed and hoped that sleep would help. The sweaty fever that followed only encouraged me to sleep more. I slept all day Saturday and Sunday, only waking for the necessities like drinking water, visiting the toilet and, of course, Facebook.

Monday morning arrives and I still feel terrible. My Chinese contact calls me and we meet to agree the plan for the week ahead. The first meeting with potential clients is in a couple of hours……..uh oh. It is only a quick meeting, an introduction, how bad can it be? I can survive that………right?

Since I am producing my own body weight in mucus every hour, I stock up on tissues to take with me. Even on the drive over there I start coughing and hacking up slime. When we arrive at the building I discover I now have to walk up eight flights of stairs. I was struggling to breath just sitting in a car and now I have Everest to climb. By the time I reached the top my wheezing lungs sounded like an accordion full of small kittens crying for their mother. I set up my presentation in what must have been the hottest room in the building, which was not helping my cold sweats. After some wet handshakes during the introductions, I began my presentation.

I always hope to stimulate my audience when I am presenting and this time was no exception, unfortunately. Despite the heavy perspiration and hacking coughing fits, my audience kept wanting to discuss various points of what I was showing them. Success, and just what I want in from a meeting……..at any other time! Hoping I would only there for half an hour, I was there over two and half hours.

So what ended the meeting? Picture this, the bursts of fever and the boiling hot room were creating beads of sweat, which had been visibly rolling off my face for at least two hours. My armpit stains now ended at my socks. I looked like shit….tied in the middle. I had already run out of the tissues, which I had brought with me, during the first hour of the meeting. So, when the final coughing fit occurred I had nothing left to wipe up the mess that happened. It came on all of a sudden, no warning, no build up. I suddenly had this urge to cough hard, very hard! Hard enough to clear the Loch Ness Monster out of my lungs. I coughed so hard I went purple and my feeble attempt to cover my mouth, with my hand, wasn’t enough to catch all the slime that flew out. It was oozing through my fingers and hanging off my chin. In addition, my nose came out in sympathy and both nostrils emptied like a shotgun going off. This was not the worst of it. Oh no, I peed too. Not a lot but enough to open wide my already watering eyes. As if it couldn’t get any worse……I farted. Since my arse was so wet from all the sweating, I really had no idea if I had just shit myself. I did not need to excuse myself from the meeting. They were already opening the door and pointing me down the corridor towards the toilets. I found the toilets easily, only to be heard cursing, “What the f**K? No toilet roll?” Shoot me! Shoot me now! How the hell was I supposed to clean up the mess I had become? I ended up just washing my hands and face with cold water, leaving them to drip dry. As you can imagine, there were no handshakes when we left and I was driven straight back to my hotel.

When I reached my hotel room, I just wanted to remove all my sweaty and soiled clothing and get in the shower. As I emptied my pockets, I could only focus on a leather keyring given to me at Christmas by my wonderful daughter and her lovely beau, which read, “Awesome Dad” and, considering all that just happen, I could only surmise, “Nah, not so much.”