Blurgh

I'm sick. A severe winter cold has been making its way through the ward and I am the latest victim. It begins with a sore throat, which I have had since midday yesterday. I hope this is the worst that it gets. When I was a child, I had step throat almost once every three months and since it happened so frequently I have a tendency now, even as an adult, to assume automatically that I've come down with it. As I reflect back upon my past, I think of how frequently I was afflicted with something or other, and how I never managed to have a mild case of much of anything. For example, when I came down with the chicken pox when I was seven, I was so ill that I missed two solid weeks of school and very nearly had to be hospitalized.

As a result, I hate hate hate being ill. Ever since I quit smoking a year and a half ago, began exercising daily, drank lots of water, and starting treating my body better overall it has been several months since I have been physically sick. The good thing about doing all of those things is that even if I do come down with something (which we all do at some point, no matter how judiciously we follow a healthy regimen) the symptoms are much milder and the duration is lessened considerably. By contrast, when I was still up to my old ways, I remember a trip to Boston in the the late winter, whereby I picked up a nasty case of the flu, and infected almost all of my graduate school classmates.

I'll feel better with time and rest, which are, of course, the only real ways to treat a cold.