The shapes on the textbook pages look alien, technological – as if they’re custom-designed docking stations intended to board my human cells. Spiky and staccato. The smell of freshly printed knowledge sheens from the paper, engendering a fog of half-formed understanding.

I can’t feel each individual cell fighting back – instead, a generalised malaise. My head aches in a non-specific way, and the throat begins to feel raw and dry. After a few days, my body spasms painfully with gargling, chesty coughs. The clear phlegm is essentially tasteless as unpleasantly spat out into the toilet bowl.

Now is the time to retreat into mounded duvets and escapist fantasy tales – to accept depression and feelings of hopelessness and overwhelm. Perhaps I can sweat it out in a few days of total rest.

I spend a whole day watching the contorted, popularised fantasies of Once Upon a Time.