I came over faint at work yesterday. My fingers went icy and numb, I broke out in a cold sweat, I had sudden nausea and dizziness, my face was — as That Man informed me — ashen.

Quite embarrassing, really.

If I ever take up writing murder mysteries again, I shall use that experience for how it feels to be poisoned. I did not think it likely that I was poisoned, and I just went and sat down for a bit till I could function again, but I think that I could just as well have died hideously, considering the way it came on.

I mean, if I had been poisoned. And then who would have been the culprit? I’d had my teeth cleaned that morning, so it could have been the dental hygienist. Or the Texas choirboys could have spiked my flour jar with arsenic as a student prank, ensuring that I would be done in the next time I made blueberry pancakes. Family members are always good — they could have dropped something right into the tea kettle.

However, no one actually poisoned me, and I did not die.

Maybe it was dengue fever. Or diphtheria.

Anyway, I left work about an hour early, once I was sure I was safe to drive, and came home and went directly to bed.

I know that I am not seriously ill, because I kept thinking, as I drifted in and out of sleep, about all the things I ought to do.

I am fairly confident that people with diphtheria do not think about such things. They are too sick.

Jane Austen in Boca is book #2 for this week of the Summer Reading Challenge. It is Pride and Prejudice set among elderly Jewish New Yorkers in a Florida retirement community. Since I have so recently been immersed in Pride and Prejudice, I was able to follow the entire thing and note all the connections, but I think the book would be enjoyable even for someone who has not read Pride and Prejudice.  This particular setting is quite exotic to me, and it might have been funnier to someone who knows the population better and has more Yiddish at her command, but I would still recommend the book.

And now I am going back to bed.