I just want to be left alone to see out my final hours in peace ... maybe with a little chicken soup, a hot water bottle, Sky on the sports channel and a blanket, even better if its just come out of the clothes dryer and is nice and warm.
Mrs P comes to my aid, not with the above, but with a glass of water, Panadol and a diagnosis.
She helpfully explains I do not have the flu. I have some buggy, virusy thing that I could have picked up from anywhere. If I had the real flu I would feel 100 times worse.
"No," she says.
"What you have is manflu."
I'm honking (blowing my nose) as she says it so it is a little difficult to pick up completely but I'm sure I detect a note of sarcasm in her voice. My hackles rise.
Actually, I'm not too sure exactly what hackles are but when they rose they hurt. "But I'm uncomfortable and in pain," I whimpered, instantly regretting the comment.
Now the door was open and I knew she knew I knew that the "you don't know about pain till you've been through childbirth" retort could be loaded into the gun and fired back at any time.
I sat there waiting to be cleaved in two by the comment no man has ever had a decent comeback on.
I mean we may think that hamstring we pulled sprinting for the corner in our last game of footy or that thumb we smashed while hammering up some fence palings was painful but by all accounts it is nothing compared to the arrival of a baby.
Anyway, the boom was about to be lowered and I sat there, a dishevelled, shivering, ill jellyfish wishing it would just happen so I could just get back to being sick and dying.
But nothing happened. Mrs P went all Julie Andrews on me, gave me a hug and said she'd make everything better. I'm not sure, as I say I was a bit delirious, but she may have even whipped out a guitar and started singing something like These Are A Few Of My Favourite Things. Mind you I might have that bit confused with the arrival of the regular Briscoe's brochure.
But I digress. Later, as she delivered some more drugs and water I felt sufficiently improved (and brave) to respond to her sarcasm and ask what the difference was between manflu and womanflu.
"Women just keep going," she said.
"We keep going to work. We keep doing the laundry, making tea, getting things done. We just don't stop and we deal with it. We get over it and feel better. Simple."
As I looked down at the drugs in my hand the solution came in a flash.
Forget the Panadol.
What I need is a sex change.
