The last day Leesa and I felt pretty good was Christmas Eve. She fixed her amazing Christmas Eve meal for two this year: cheese biscuits, scrambled eggs and sausage, two kinds of gravy (savory brown and semi-sweet dark chocolate). After nightfall, we went downtown in Johnson City and walked through the Christmas trees in the parks—Founders and King Commons. The last stop of the day was Wesley Memorial United Methodist Church, where we provided music for the 9:00 PM Christmas Eve Candlelight Service.
We came down with flu on Christmas Day. We’d finished family things a couple of days before, so quiet time at home together was just fine, as long as we didn’t feel too bad. For my part, I’ve been much worse with flu at various points in the past. Our thinking is that having gotten our flu shots this year kept this infection from being as brutal as it might have been. Anyway, the week between Christmas and New Year’s was a lot of ups and downs—feeling good one minute, running a low-grade elevated temperature the next. Leesa would feel bad, and I would feel good; Leesa would feel good, and I would feel bad.
By Thursday and Friday, I thought I was steadily feeling pretty good, but Saturday brought a turn for the worse. Sometime deep in the night—Saturday the 30th into Sunday the 31st—I checked the opening time of my doctor’s walk-in clinic (7:00 AM). A little after 6:30, I woke Leesa and told her I was going to get checked out. Since I’d already had the flu for the week it usually lasts, not much could be done about that. What Dr. Stoots discovered was a touch of pneumonia, for which she prescribed a couple of antibiotics. Leesa and I were to leave that day—Sunday, New Year’s Eve—for a week in Charleston, so I asked if I could travel. Dr Stoots said I could; I just shouldn’t be much around other folks if I was running a fever. (Apparently, a temperature must be 100+ to qualify as “fever”; mine never got higher than 99.8, but that was during the week before our trip.)
Leesa and I believed that Charleston—the Holy City—was a far better place to recuperate than the house we’d been cooped up in all week, so we left a little after noon on New Year’s Eve. By 6:30 or so, we arrived at our personal Charleston entry point: Five Loaves Cafe in Summerville (see link below).
The healing began.
I got in my 10K steps (minimum) every day. On Thursday the 4th, I got over 20K steps.
Here are some places the Holy City offered for healing:
- Five Loaves Cafe (Summerville)
- Fleet Landing
- Amen Street
- Brown Dog Deli
- The Griffon
- Pizzeria di Giovanni
- Hank’s Seafood
- Millers All Day
Pictures from the trip . . .
Raleigh and Lacy were with us as well, but I somehow didn’t get any pictures of them or all of us together. In spite of the lack of corroborating visual evidence, we had a hell of a good time with them.
Charleston—Holy City—see you again in a couple of months.