Well, it’s official: After two days of trying to deny it, I am officially at “visit-the-doctor” levels of illness. While waiting for the office to open this morning, I’ve attempted to kill time with some favorite television programs, only to find them not to my sick brain’s liking. Gokaiger required too much energy devoted to reading the subtitles, the familiarity of Andy Griffith made it annoying rather than comforting, and the operating room sequences of M*A*S*H were just uncomfortable to watch, as the tiny hypochondriac in my brain panicked about the fact that we’re clearly gonna die, and my doc is no Hawkeye Pierce. I finally ended up just turning off the TV entirely (which in itself is a shocking revelation of how I feel, given my love of ‘TV as wallpaper’), which leads us to today’s infirm and short-tempered query…
The MS-QOTD (pronounced, as always, “misquoted”) also can’t watch the frenetic and layered Series 1 of Doctor Who (with the Ninth Doctor and Rose) while so incpacitated, even though I love the episodes, asking: Which of your favorite pop culture experiences are you less able to tolerate when you feel sick?
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A lot of flashy Japanese media, such as some anime and Super Sentai, as well as some action movies and TV shows that use flashy colors and fast movements are things I avoid while extremely nauseated as they tend to make it worse. Even the blur of hyperspace in Star Wars or the swirly time vortex of Doctor Who for a few seconds can set me off.
I avoid watching TV or using the computer entirely and even loud music when I have a migraine, which is unfortunately quite often due to some health issues I have.
For some reason I don’t completely understand, I cannot play certain video games with bugs or insects and the like when I have a bad cold or the flu. Even a “cute” bug like a Pokemon will make me feel very uncomfortable, as if I have bugs crawling under my skin.
All things being equal, what I watch on TV when I’m sick depends a lot on how sick I’m feeling. If I’m at the point where I could fall asleep at any minute from the massive amounts of medication then it’s something familiar that I’ve watched before, so I don’t really care if I miss the plot by zonking out. Burn Notice, Psych, various incarnations of NCIS/CSI/OMGWTFBBQ, and what have you, are all in rotation at that point. If I’m awake enough to actually pay attention to a plot, I’ll try to pick something I haven’t watched before but have been meaning to catch up on, like a Netflix original show or something that may be a few years old but has a couple seasons in the can – Hell on Wheels, Justified, Sons of Anarchy, Weeds, Breaking Bad, The Walking Dead, and the more recent seasons of Doctor Who all fit the bill in that case.