Cough, cough

Being sick sucks.

On average, I am a pretty healthy person. I get good and sick maybe once a year, alternating summer and winter. Perhaps being perpetually healthy is part of being young and, as my parents keep reminding me, it will only be downhill from here. But for now, I am in pretty good shape health wise.

I think that is why I am so ill equipped to handle an illness when I do come down with something. I was sick nearly all last week. I woke up Monday morning with a tickle in my throat. Vowing not to get sick, I downed an extra glass of milk, remembered my multi-vitamin and hit up my hypochondriac work colleague for some of her Emergen-C. I drank lots of tea all day at work, and in my head I chanted, “I will not get sick, I will not get sick,” like the little Medicaid-engine that could. By the time I got home, I had a headache, a body ache, a really sore throat and full sinus congestion. So I went to bed early, hoping to nip what ever it was in the bud.

When I woke up on Tuesday and I had lost the battle. The pressure in my sinuses made my forehead throb, the room tilted crazily any time my body became fully vertical and I could barely talk. Basically, hell visited on my own body. It took me ten minutes to fully admit that, yes, I was sick. Too sick to go to work.

This has been a year of strange milestones. Tuesday morning, I took my first “real world” sick day. I called into my office and attempted to croak to my boss, “I don’t think I can make it in today.” My boss, lovely woman that she is, heard me say hello and replied, “You aren’t coming in to work today.” I groaned something that sounded like an apology and her response was, “Don’t worry about it; we’ll call you if we need anything.” (I did get two phone calls, one at noon and once at two thirty, but both times she was very apologetic and both times it was due to a crisis in my area of expertise. Another milestone- solving problems for international dignitaries in my pajamas.)

Now generally, I am a big fan of the “real world” thus far. There seems to be an uneasy truce between us. That was, of course, until this week. Being sick sucks. Being sick in the real world SUCKS. There is no one to bring you juice when your mouth is so dry your lips have started to crack. If you are hungry, you have to haul your pasty, shivering self out of bed and into the kitchen to see what you can find. No one will pick up the tissues you throw on the floor by your bed because the trash can is just so far away. Sex and the City DVDs don’t appear magically, accompanied by spicy thai basil soup and cough drops- you have to bundle up and walk outside, into the (literally) freezing windy day and track those down yourself. On foot, by the way, because no way was driving with crazy Tilt-A-Vision a good idea.

Somewhere around Wednesday morning the thought appeared in my head and wouldn’t go away. I want my mommy. Or a babysitter. Or a hired hand. Because being on my own, an adult, a “grown-up” if you will, is not all it is cracked up to be. Wah.

Here endith my use of the “whiny voice.” I have my own voice (mostly) back now, and feeling much better.

Thanks for the phone calls, the long-distance thoughts and well-wishes. If anyone wants to start a delivery service for sick people, let me know. A few well placed ads on day time TV and the backs of DayQuill bottles and we would make a KILLING. “Cough drops, hot soup and tea with honey, delivered to your door in an hour or less.” I would have paid any amount of money for that service a few days ago.