April 26
I woke up in the middle of the night with a stuffy head and a runny nose and decided that I was sick, and then my nose started twitching and before I could even get my hoof up I sneezed and I thought it would be loud enough to wake up Peggy but it wasn’t.
And that was pretty much it for my night. I was either too hot or too cold, and no matter how I lay in bed I couldn't get comfortable for too long.
I kept trying to sleep, but it just wasn't working at all. I probably dozed off and on but it wasn't restful at all and I finally got up at well before sunrise and went out and walked around the quad for a bit and then went back to my room and turned on my computer and sent a computer letter to Miss Cherilyn because I was supposed to do that if I was sick or hurt. Then I went and took a hot shower because I knew that it would make me feel a little bit better.
Of course such relief is short-lived, unless I wanted to stay in there all day.
I think it would have been better to have been in the showers in Hoben, because there was a whole shower room and I could have filled it all with steam, but that shower room wasn't for girls unless I had permission and I didn't want to wake up Sean to ask him.
When I got back to our room, I checked my computer mail and I had a letter from Miss Cherilyn and she said that they would be over soon.
I couldn't decide if I should wake up Peggy to warn her because she probably wouldn't want to see them when she was in her sleeping clothes, or if I should let her sleep and maybe they would be gone before she woke up.
And I wound up not making my decision before there was a quiet knock at the door and I stood on my hind hooves and looked through the spy-hole and it was Miss Cherilyn and Mister Salvatore so I let her in but said that he had to wait outside because Peggy was asleep and not wearing pants. So he handed her a bag and said that he would be in the hall and she came in and sat down on my bed and asked if I minded if she did some tests.
I said it was okay, so she took out a flat tablet that was like a pocket telephone only bigger and she set it up on my desk where it was facing us and she touched some buttons on the screen and pretty soon a picture came up of a unicorn.
He said that he was going to ask me how I felt while Miss Cherilyn got ready and I didn't know what that meant until I saw her getting a thermometer out of the bag and putting on blue gloves. Humans like to wear those to keep their hands safe.
When I got done saying when I'd started to feel sick and what my symptoms were she stuck the thermometer in me and then held her hands up against my neck to feel for my pulse, and after she was done making sure that my heart was still working she used a stethoscope to listen to my heart and my lungs, which was about when Peggy woke up.
Peggy didn't pay any attention to Miss Cherilyn, who was talking to the doctor on the big pocket telephone, but she went right over to me and petted my head and asked what was going on and I told her I was feeling sick and assured her it wasn't because we'd run around in the thunderstorm last night.
Then she had to move so that Miss Cherilyn could look at the thermometer and take it back out and Peggy asked why I didn't just put it in my mouth and I said that I really would rather not.
The doctor said that I either had a cold or an upper respiratory tract infection, and he wanted some more tests to be sure which it was.
I wasn't expecting to go right away, but Miss Cherilyn said that they were ready to take me and she asked Peggy if she wanted to come along, too.
She did, so Miss Cherilyn gave her ten minutes to get ready and told me that I should take anything that I thought I might need for a van ride and the doctor's office. Then when Peggy had put on a robe and gone to the bathroom she went outside to talk to Mister Salvatore for a minute.
When we were ready—which only took about ten minutes—we all got into Sienna and Mister Salvatore went out to the 94 Interstate and headed east. I thought we might be going to East Lansing, but we passed by the 69 Interstate and kept going straight.
We followed a blue car almost all the way there. It got in front of us right after we passed the 69 Interstate and then Mister Salvatore followed it. I guess it was showing him where to go.
They eventually stopped in front of a low brick building and the blue car left, 'cause it's job was done.
We all got out of the van and went inside and I got to go to a little room where a couple of nice nurses took blood samples and used a stick with cotton on the end of it to wipe some of the snot out of my nostrils and then they used a bright little light to look into my nose and eyes and mouth and pretty much everywhere.
Peggy stayed in the room with me and so did Miss Cherilyn. Mister Salvatore spent his time out in the hallway on his portable telephone and every now and then I would see him pacing up and down.
I was upset that I was missing class. I could have gone and then seen the doctor afterward. I almost regretted calling them. But it was important to be healthy, and Miss Chestnut had told us several times that it was possible that we might get some kind of sickness that nopony had ever had before because we were in a whole new world, so it was important to tell our assistants whenever we felt sick.
And I was starting to get worried because it felt like I had been there forever already and I hadn't heard any results so I was thinking that maybe what they found was a new thing that nopony had ever been sick with before and to distract myself I got out a poetry book and started reading it.
I'd read a half-dozen poems before I thought that maybe Peggy and Miss Cherilyn were also getting bored with waiting so I read the next one out loud and then we took turns reading poems.
We got interrupted when a nurse came in with lunch for all of us. I wasn't all that hungry, so I hadn't been thinking about it, but Peggy had missed breakfast, and I thought that Miss Cherilyn had, too. So I poked at my food and had half a sandwich that I didn't really want but they also had given me a big glass of thick milk which the nurse who brought the food said was an instant breakfast.
When we were done a doctor came in and she said that I just had a cold and a mild fever and as long as I got lots of rest and drank plenty of water I'd be fine in a few days. I asked her if it would be okay if I went to Madison this weekend to see Gusty's play and she said that it would be as long as I wasn't showing any more symptoms.
Then she said that they were going to set up a schedule to do blood tests just to make sure that everything was okay but that could be done in my dorm room and they would just send someone over. And then we were free to go.
Of course by the time we got back in Sienna I knew that we wouldn't be getting back to Kalamazoo until it was late.
We had to go out a different way than we'd come in because there was a big white bus that said CDC on it parked near the entrance. I didn't know what that was so I asked Miss Cherilyn and she said that it was sort of a portable hospital.
It was dinnertime when we got back to Kalamazoo and I still wasn't very hungry even though they said that we could go to Taco Bell. I was tired and felt pretty miserable so Mister Salvatore stopped by his office and brought out a big bag of stuff which he said would help make me feel better, including little candies called antihistamines which tasted minty and made the mucus go away.
Even more exciting was that there was a bag of tea from Equestria and even though I wasn't that particular to tea the smell of it just relaxed me.
When we were back in our dorm I made a cup of tea and drank it and I felt a lot better after that, but I was pretty tired so even though it was still light out I got into bed and I thought that I ought to send a computer letter to Conrad so that he would know why I had missed class, but then it felt like that was too much effort so I just closed my eyes instead.