On Being Ill

In the old days, there was a good side to being ill in that you got to miss the meetings. Here in this day and age, you don't have to miss the meetings because you can pick up the phone and join in a telecon, you can surf to the website and share someone's desktop, you can share in all the joy and exuberance that is a corporate meeting without leaving the comfort of your sickbed.

It's difficult for the body to heal when it gets no rest.

The virus made its presence known half-way through the day yesterday, adding an extra spice to the normal creaks and groans of the body, a little something that hadn't been there before but, boy, you sure can't miss it now. The aching got louder as the day progressed. By the time five o'clock rolled around, it was practically screaming, and no amount of over-the-counter medications - which are a miracle if they can be found at any normal corporate office in these days of frivolous lawsuits - could mask it. The head was pounding, the legs were feeling as though they'd been dragged across a carpet of splinters, and the breath was getting wheezy. It was time to go "camo". Grab the bags, head for the parking lot with your cap pulled down over your eyes, don't look at anyone and for goodness' sake, don't say a word, just bolt. Get in the car and head down the road toward home, crawl into bed with a generous dose of NyQuil (or TheraFlu), and wait to see what tomorrow brings.

Everyone has been sick lately, leastways everyone at work. The influenza has made its presence known, and there are some copycatters around as well, probably just some bacteriums on the hoof, looking for amusement in these antiseptic times. Those hardest hit elicit true sympathy, while the rest of us - those who are not spending hours hunched over porcelain bowls - are suspected of chicanery and lies. The truth is that we are sick; it is just a matter of detail that the work is what is making us sick, not the germs.

There was an entire town out here that shut the doors to the local schools for a time because there were so many teachers and students out with the flu. It was my fate to meet up with some of those folk at the last Scout campout. Spent nearly the whole day with them, in fact, helping to judge some of the Scout activities. And of course their favorite topic of conversation was the horrible indignities played upon their poor bodies by this latest plague (you know how men can be). It was a good thing that my lack of appetite restrained me from eating much the night before, else it might've been lost in the flood of descriptions which peppered the conversation of my fellow judges.

Thus it was no surprise that some viral entity managed to make it past my defenses and induce the immune system to maximum response. The only way to avoid such things in this season is to avoid any gathering of individuals, and as a father and Scout leader and Sunday School teacher and employee, this is obviously out of the question. I am surrounded by people all the time, them and their nasty, icky, disgusting bugs which swarm like angry bees, waiting for a chance to sting. I shake their hands, I breathe their air, I smell their vapor trails of sweat and effluence as they pass by. It is impossible to pass through this world unscathed; one can only hope that the past experiences of one's life are adequate preparation for the future.


Meanwhile, I'm going to have another dose of TheraFlu.