The Ghost of Death is Upon Me, and So I Flail

I managed to get the flu, and I happen to concurrently be singing in John Adams's The Death of Klinghoffer, which is a contemporary piece based on the story of the 1985 hijacking by Palestinian terrorists of the cruise ship, Achille Lauro, in which Leon Klinghoffer was the only passenger who died, but he happened to be a Jewish American in a wheelchair, and they threw him overboard. Anyway, the music was very hard to learn, and we were totally under-rehearsed. And I, of course, managed to get sick the week of dress rehearsals and the performance. I was running a 100-degree fever and trying to eke out very difficult rhythms and intervals, and I did not appreciate being yelled at (the conductor was really yelling at the chorus as a whole) for not knowing the music very well. And we had two performances of Aida that week, too: a high stress situation, even when you're not sick.

I managed to make it through the concert without fainting, although I did keep a wad of tissues in my sleeve during the performance and kept surreptitiously dabbing my nose whenever I wasn't singing and blowing my nose when the music got loud. Basically, all week, I kept to my bed during the day, and about 2 PM I would force myself to get up and take a shower, pop a few Advil to break the fever, and go to rehearsal/performance. Afterwards, I would drive home and collapse into bed. As a result, I think I've been sick longer than I probably would have been if I had just stayed in bed the whole time.