I’m sick of being sick. Every day symptoms change, and I plead and beg God to stop it because every day is worse than the one before. I thought it was bad the day I went to the doctor; I had the worst headache of my life and my lymph nodes were swollen and ached. I figured the antibiotics would kick in after 24 hours; that’s how I pushed through the sleep apnea and nausea. They have to have kicked in after 48 hours, I told myself as I bawled uncontrollably on the couch with a pounding headache and both of my ears streaking with pain at my every movement. It’s no wonder I’m dehydrated when each gulp of water feels like a knife stabbing into my neck. I have an eternal bad taste in my mouth, but that’s the least of my worries. My mom has me on the maximum dosages of both ibprophen and Tylenol, and that takes care of the headaches, mostly. She tells me the amoxicillin is to fight off the infection, not to treat the symptoms; I yell at her in frustration that it’s making me feel worse and therefore cannot be helping me! I don’t want to drink orange juice or water; I don’t want to take my antibiotic with food; I don’t want to go to school and see Ryan; he doesn’t understand how much pain I’m in; no one understands; they don’t know how torturous it is to have your inner ears ache and itch at the same time. It’s a shockwave of pain to sneeze, my neck throbs when I yawn; coughing is unspeakable, let my throat itch; each time I swallow my own spit, it feels like someone just won’t stop scraping away at my throat with sandpaper. I want to sleep it off, but I’m afraid to go to sleep because every day I wake up feeling worse than the last.