Sidelined

I didn’t think it could happen to me. I thought, “I won’t be one of those cold-catching wimps. I don’t get sick! I am super-woman!”
I can hear you laughing, and you’re right. I spent my Christmas vacation sick as a dog. In fact, I’m still not quite over it.

Actually, it was a viral infection. I know because the lady at the clinic told me. It’s not very difficult to get one; I’m amazed that it took me this long. Because here’s all you have to do to catch a viral infection: be somewhere that anybody else has been. Say perhaps the U-Scan screen at Kroger.
That little virus is just biding its time for a chance to jump onto your hand. And when it does, you just touch your eyes, nose or mouth, and voilà! The virus gets inside you, sets up shop and gets to work doing what it does best – multiplying.
Anyway, the only reason I went to the nurse at the clinic was to obtain a drug that would make this thing go away. After telling me she couldn’t give me anything that would make it go away, that was all I wanted to do myself. Go away.
Leave the clinic and go crawl into bed.
Just my luck I got one of those nurse practitioners right out of school who are still fresh and proud of her knowledge of the healing arts. Bless her heart, it took this talking medical encyclopedia another 10 minutes to explain why she couldn’t give me an antibiotic to banish the little varmint that had invaded my body.
She explained how people have been abusing antibiotics for years, in effect helping “super bugs” evolve into monsters that, if we’re not careful, won’t be stopped by any drug. Turns out a nation of sniffly people have been taking antibiotics at the least hint of sickness when they should have just “let it run its course.” And it didn’t matter if I was a good citizen and didn’t take the antibiotics myself. The over-medicating people were ruining things for everyone else, speeding up the mutation of the little monsters regardless of whether I popped any Penicillin myself or not.
It reminded me of an apartment building where I used to live.
The utilities were not included in the rent, but there were no individual meters installed for any of the units. This meant that KUB had to take the total kilowatt usage of the entire building every month and divide it evenly by the number of apartments. Ergo, even though I was a responsible person who didn’t run her radiator at full blast with the windows open all day, I had to pay part of the bill of the schmuck(s) who did. So, like my sky-rocketing heat bill, the inexorable strengthening of this virus was not my fault, and yet here I was bearing the brunt of the recklessness of others. Chalk it up to another one of those things about life that just isn’t fair.
Anyway, clinic lady was going on and on about staph, strep, sulfa, MRSA – apparently her lecture would cover the entire history of Western medicine – which would all be fascinating if I weren’t so sick that my knees were beginning to buckle. I just stood there wobbling and smiling wanly as she nattered on about germs and cures and “producing” (her word for when you cough up a bunch of crud). I’m sure she had no idea that my sinuses were about to burst out through my face (a bit messy, but an improvement from them throbbing like tiny knives of fire).

I finally got her to let me go home, where I commenced to alternately (a) sweat like an NBA star at the halftime buzzer, and (b) shiver under mounds of flannel, fleece and down. Sounds like a law firm, doesn’t it?
“Good morning, Flannel Fleece and Down, how may I help you?”
“Yes, I’d like to sue that guy who was ahead of me at the Kroger U-Scan!”
Playlist:
1. Take The Pain Away – The Ramones
2. It Only Hurts When I'm Breathing – Shania Twain
3. Tossin' and Turnin' All Night – Bobby Lewis
4. Callin' In Sick – Weird Al Yankovic
5. I Want a New Drug – Huey Lewis and the News
6. You Got to Take Sick and Die Some of These Days – Muddy Waters
7. Tear Off Your Own Head – The Bangles
8. The Hurt – Cat Stevens
9. You Take My Breath Away – Eva Cassidy
10. Night Fever – Bee Gees