The View from Cadiz, Kentucky

I've been sick since this past Wednesday--the flu, I think. I was on a recruiting trip to Pellissippi State Community College in Knoxville that rainy day, and by the time I returned to Johnson City that afternoon, I was chilling. And I mean chilling, not chillin'. By the time I got home from Praise Team rehearsal at church, my fever was 102.5. The next day I taught a slightly abbreviated class and put in a slightly abbreviated day and that night ran a fever of 102.7. On Friday I stayed away from work altogether. Saturday saw a fever running from 99 to 101 all day long. I slept a lot, and by the time Saturday night came, I got almost no sleep. So, Sunday morning found me at church, playing my guitar and singing on only a couple hours overnight sleep and, I'm sure, the same fever. Sunday night again--102.7. I knew I had to leave for Denver today, and I thought I wasn't going to make it. But sometime during the wee hours of the morning--around 4:00 a.m.--my fever broke as dramatically as a TV fever in an old jungle movie. I woke up to find my pillow and hair and parts of the bed covers around my shoulders soaking wet with a cold sweat. So, while I move slowly and didn't leave Johnson City until the middle of the afternoon, I did actually make it out.

I passed through the east side of Nashville around sundown. Sorry, Mark. I initially thought I might just come to your place on this first leg, but I didn't want to bring any lingering sickness into your house. I also didn't want to shake your house all night with this wracking cough that is left over from the flu. So, my neighbor here at Cadiz Super 8 will be the only one to suffer besides me. (I'll stop in Nashville for supper Sunday evening, if that's okay.)

Once I decided I couldn't inflict myself on my Nashville friends, I knew I was stay in Cadiz. I hadn't been here in a good while, not since leaving my first job at Murray State University. Cadiz is the jumping-off point my family and I used when we lived in Murray. From our ancestral home in North Carolina, we would travel I-40 to Nashville, take I-24 up to Cadiz and then go west through the Land Between the Lakes to Murray, a place that some young professors leave because it's somewhat remote. I left too but not for that reason. My little family--the three of us--enjoyed our life in Murray, where it was just us to ourselves without all the other family now so near to us. Had things worked out differently professionally, I think we would have been happy there.

That's enough for now. I'm going to crawl in bed and try to get some sleep between fits of coughing.