feeling like death?

Why do we say we feel like death?
I feel terrible; my brain is bulging through my skull and stretching at my skin, my throat is rasping desperately searching for air. I have blisers on my tongue, bruises on my body, everything is a fiery glowing haze of confusion and terrifying torment but I don't feel like death. Death doesn't feel or if it does presumbly I have no knowledge; it just feels like nothing. What I feel just proves I feel alive, I just feel pain because i am ill. Tommorow will be better, tommorow I won't be reaching for tissue upon tissue and soaking it with a mix of blood and mucus. Tommorow I will jsut get on with it. The reason; however dramatic and sorry for ourselves we feel we are just human. Evryone gets ill, (his mild form of illness we call a cold) and what can we do about it. Nothing. Therefore make the most out of it... but just get on with it.