Sick

I have been sick the last couple of days. Being sick is considerably less fun as a grown man than it was when I was a boy and it meant staying home from school to explore the world of daytime television. It's never felt good to be sick, but the break in monotony was then pretty well worth the pain. It helps also that then I was a minor under the care of someone else. All I had to do was loiter around the house and take pills. In an extreme situation, I might need to visit the doctor, and roaming around town in the middle of a weekday was its own thrill.

This particular illness is fairly mundane, but it struck with alarming suddenness. There I was, entertaining friends with some VHS tapes at my apartment. They left, and I made myself some spaghetti. I started to feel not great, but as it was now after two or three in the morning, it seemed reasonable to attribute my condition to simple fatigue. I woke up feeling significantly worse. It was all the classic, timeless symptoms. I had sore throat, coughing, runny nose and headaches.

It is much harder as an adult to set aside other responsibilities and just get better. It has always been harder for adults, I suppose, but with technology blurring the line between one's work, one's social life and one's private life, it only seems harder. Demands on a person do not let up when they are ill, and knowing someone's sick seems to have relatively little impact. On the other hand, it's nice to know I have a valid excuse.

People are more apt to give someone sick space in person. More potent than any illness is the sheer fear of getting it. You get the leper treatment at the slightest hint of being unwell. It's disconcerting. You could get the idea that you're more sick than you think from the way people treat you, which is as if you're irradiated. As a sick person, if I could impart any wisdom to the non-sick, it would be that it's not as bad as you think. Honestly, though, I will be glad when I'm over it.