Haiku for the week

All sense of self gone;
Only the headache remains,
And the rattling lungs.

One week in, and no sign of improvement. This might well be the nastiest cold I've had since childhood (though heaven knows I've had a few stinkers here in China).

When I was very young, this was practically a way of life for me. I was officially 'sickly'; X-rays showed mysterious 'shadows' around the edges of my lungs, which eventually led to a diagnosis of asthma (I was never convinced of that; I just thought my lungs didn't work that well, and I got out-of-breath and wheezy rather too easily - but I knew kids who had serious not-being-able-to-breathe asthma attacks out of the blue, and my problems weren't nearly that bad); even TB was suspected at one point. Twice or thrice a year I had a little run-in with death: bronchitis, pneumonia, pleurisy. I had a whole drawer full of cough linctus and anti-histamine pills and antibiotics and Ventolin inhalers. Doctors found me a curious case, never did have much of a theory as to why I was so goddamned ill all the time.

I got better pretty much overnight when my Dad finally stopped smoking.

The last few years in Beijing my lungs have started packing up on me again. I wonder why that would be.

Now I have that feeling once again. I cannnot explain, you would not understand...