Sickness

I hate being sick. It is a most vexatious experience. You go about feeling generally blah, various bits of your anatomy don't function at acceptable levels, nothing is interesting, fatigue lurks around every exertion, and yet sleep is broken and heavy and restless. You fall asleep over books, can't concentrate on the boringest movies and TV ever, can't work...

Now, I have what probably qualifies as excellent health. What I speak of here are the easy kinds of sicknesses, like colds or flus, for I am currently suffering under the former affliction (sniffle). I have never personally dealt with anything really serious, so I can't comment on horrible things like cancer or malaria or broken limbs or werewolves or gunshot wounds or anything of that kind. Just colds (cof!), and that seems quite enough for now.

In fact, it is quite enough. Colds and flus often knock you down and leave you like that for a while. You don't feel like doing anything; and sometimes you aren't able to do anything - except snuggle under blankets, use up boxes of tissues, drink plenty of fluids, and hope for chicken soup. And, nobody really wants you to be up doing anything: it is the one time the general public (friends, employers, and enemies alike) don't want you around at all. For colds and flus are contagious - the worst crime in our germaphobe culture. Cancer isn't catching. Neither is malaria, unless you happen to have a pet mosquito. You can't pick up a strain of broken limbs or gunshot wounds. And werewolves can still maintain friends and jobs, unless there is a full moon. But - "You have a cold?! Begone, unclean one!"

And, in that way there is something nice about getting sick. It absolves you from certain responsibilities (like, getting a job, right now), and restricts you from certain duties (like, cooking when you don't feel like it), and excuses you from certain necessities (like cleaning). And in all that spare time, when not sleeping fitfully, as you snuggle under blankets and reach for another tissue you can sometimes read books that you wouldn't otherwise have time for and watch that movie you always pass over at other times. Unless you can't concentrate, of course. (I have a habit of saying "I'll do that when I'm sick next" and then not getting to it!)

I am grateful for my good health. It's one of those things that I take for granted, so much that when it is even slightly dislodged I feel very sorry for myself. And yet, if I had been born 150 years ago (and lived past infancy, which is unlikely), then I probably would not have made it to my current age and almost certainly not as healthy as I am. For all our germaphobicness, we live in an amazingly healthy time with a wonderfully good diet. We are blessed. Even if it doesn't feel like it to me right now.

(Sneeze!) Now, excuse me while I drift off to read a "Doctor Who" graphic novel...