“Do you have to, do you have to,
Do you have to let it linger?”
– lyrics to “Linger,” by The Cranberries

 
I felt better a week ago. It’s into the third week and I’m still fighting this thing. I feel like reheated crap on a stick. Most of today I spent sleeping on and off. As I laid here thinking this afternoon, I couldn’t believe how awful I feel this far in. Most people get sick, they’re BLAH for a week and then they recover. With me, it lingers.

I first noticed this around age 13 when both my father and I got sick. We’d just switched to new health insurance — my first experience with big, bad HMOs — and, as a result, a new doctor. My father quickly recovered and returned to work. At first, I appeared to be on the same track, then suddenly I got worse. It seemed to me like I’d gotten sick again. I ended up being sick two weeks to his one.

That’s the first time I noticed it, but given my health difficulties up to then, I’m sure it wasn’t the first time it happened. After that, I watched it happen time and again.

That’s exactly how it went down this time. By the first Monday, less than a week in, I seemed pretty much over it. I still coughed up gunk, but gunk increasingly thinner and lighter in color. I thought I was out of the woods. All weekend, I’d marveled at the speed of my recovery. Then it went south. By Wednesday, I felt awful again. Here it’s almost another Wednesday later, and I’m no better.

 
Right now, I’m inclined to blame the infection. I’m prone to getting infections when sick, and I’m thinking that is a large contributor to the lingering.

I tried to get away without taking antibiotics. I do not like taking pills. In my 20’s, I frequently let my body fight infections off on its own. This time it’s not going away. I’ve given in and started the antibiotics, and I’m a little distressed and disappointed my body wasn’t able to get rid of this infection itself.

Posted: April 16th, 2008 under Life Journals.
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If you follow me on Twitter (yeah, right), then you know I’ve been sick the past couple days. I hate being sick. Not that many people enjoy sickness, but I hate it with a passion.

I take illness as a personal affront. I’ve spent so much of my life sick, particularly in my first 16 or 17 years, that I almost feel I should now be exempt, as if we’re each given a certain allotment of sick days, and I met my quota a couple of decades back. Any illness that comes near me now should be in violation of some cosmic law and subject to immediate extinction. Unfortunately, life doesn’t work that way.

These days, I probably don’t fall ill more often than the average person, maybe once or twice a year, but it still riles me. It brings up all those wasted years, all that I lost, all that I missed out on. It reminds me that I am still subject to all the faults inherent in this flesh, all that is “common to man,” and that even worse could still await me.

So, while I erroneously think past suffering should somehow exempt me from future suffering, I know that the only permanent escape from sickness is death, if death isn’t the ultimate permanent sickness, that is.

Posted: April 7th, 2008 under Life Journals.
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