Crawling from the wreckage
"Aaaaah" (is this too heinous?)
I do not mind spending fourteen days hacking-while-groping-for-a-kleenex.
I do not mind wrestling with a virus, which presumably doesn’t respond to anti-bacterial medication.
I believe in wearing it down.
I do mind the uncertainty accompanying this long-lived bug. The possibility that it will decide to live here forever. This is the closest I can come to imagining what “cancer” is for other people (since my case seemed to flit in and back out of my life). Something that hurts, and won’t promise to go away.
So I try to be stoic.
But true stoics don’t include a nauseating down-the-gullet selfie, in hopes some M.D. will say:
“That’s consumption!”, thereby validating my oh-so-fleeting case of hypochondria.
Normally, I suffer, rather, I BENEFIT from the opposite of hypochondria.
For fifty three years, I’ve been in the best health of my life, never felt more fit, and it’s just a temporary inconvenience that I sound like a hairball-heaving feline.
This sort of belief stood me in great stead at races, where a veritable sick house convened at the starting line. All around me complained the sick and the near-dead, performing the ritual ‘laying on of the excuses’. Sciatica was particularly contagious one season. There was always the flu. There was overtraining evident but no one admitted that one. Even plague came up.
My favorite line (other than “ladies, start your periods”) was: “I’m so well-rested!”
Twas true. My “training” consisted of reading, eating, typing, and lolling in between weekends.
How in the world did I get away with this?
(Shhh! Inherited physique + superior bicycle! Don’t tell!)
Folks still never mention how peppy they feel these days (I indulge in one per year, maybe not a big enough sample).
In fact, the pale and the halt really are showing up at the line. They’re downright green-looking, unwell. Not felled by a pathogen, merely unmade by merrymaking. Balancing out all that overhealthy riding and breathing good fresh air.
Tisn’t natural.
I have yet to get to the bottom of this mystery.
.”
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Jacquie Phelan's Weblog 
I’m *ahem* chipper, fine, never felt better. However Mz. Jaquie, I send you much sympathy (consider your fishing trip a success!) and antiviral e-hugs.
Get well, Jacquie! More antiviral e-hugs… 😉
>>(Shhh! Inherited physique + superior bicycle! Don’t tell!)<<
I always take these boasts of inherited great health and strength with equal parts granular salt and mild envy. Being a product of ethnic Jewish inbreeding myself (I came from a family who Didn’t Marry Out, on either side, for centuries), I know that I am playing with less than a full genetic deck. There are actual signs and symptoms of this reality that I live with daily, and occasionally they cramp my style. Yet — I still manage to ride my bike every day and do the heavy lifting in the vegetable garden at home. (Like loading, unloading and spreading the 200 lbs of free horse-poop we just scored. Phew!)
Does this mean that I’ll live in perfect vitality till I’m 90? Not likely, and in fact I’m not counting on it. But it does mean that to a certain extent, certain genetic factors can be overcome through the choices we make and the habits we develop. I’ll never be a world-class racer — and I knew that when I was still a kid — but I will be a daily bike rider for the rest of my life, and that means absolutely everything to me. I’d bet that at least half the folks who line up at the start of all those races are working with less-than-ideal genetic material and somehow succeed in spite of themselves. You may have great genes, but you also made choices that seem to have made a difference in your overall health. We all know of folks with equally great genetic material who piss it all away, and it shows.
So I think we all ought to give ourselves a little more credit for the good choices we make, because I think they really count in our overall big picture.
Meanwhile, do what comes naturally and naturally kick that virus in the butt!
I hope you feel better quick!
I inherited my physique… it just happens to be soft and doughy. I’m trying to fix that (story of my life– the “Battle of the Bulge”).
Never give up and never surrender, Jacquie.