Invasion of the Germs

I imagine that if you haven't been sick during the past month, you know someone who has been ill during that time.  Every year, in September, I get a cold.  And the same stupidity plays out repeatedly.

The Ten Steps of Coping With Vic Sickness

1. Start feeling crappy and get annoyed ("I don't have time to be sick")
2. Deny crappiness and claim the sneezes and snot are just a result of seasonal allergies
3. Begin taking Claritin
4. Continue denial in hopes that if you keep telling yourself it's allergies, it WILL be just that
5. Buy different allergy medication and some other cold medication "just in case"
6. Get really sick and listen to people tell you how you should be resting.  Ignore them.  You don't have time to be sick, remember?
7. Blame the now-confirmed sickness on jinxing yourself during step 5 by buying that "just-in-case cold medicine"
8. Become one with the couch and admit "I think I might be sick".  
9. Finally take care of yourself and get better.  This is the one intelligent step.
10. Realize that somewhere in the midst of the denial around number 4, you were kissing and hugging your family and now you've passed it on to them and they are miserable

Optional Step 11) After everyone gets better, you get sick AGAIN, but this time you blame your family instead of allergies.  Do not take responsibility!  Ever.

So, I'm at step 11 right now.  And I'm totally annoyed, which puts me back at Step 1.  The second time around the steps are modified. (Yes, there are more.  I can make up as many as I want, you know.)

1. Start feeling crappy AGAIN and get annoyed. ("Really?? This came full circle??") Blame everyone from Step 10 above and have a reason why they are probably the host of this illness
2. Skip the whole allergy rigmarole and immediately start bitching about how you shouldn't have been hugging and kissing people because now THEY gave you the cold again
3. Buy multiple kinds of medication.  Sinus, Sinus and Cold, Cold and Flu, decongestants, expectorants, throat sprays, sore throat syrup, cough lozenges, and every syrup that has "Robitussin" on the packaging.
4. After being ill for another day, go back out and buy ALL of the above shit again, but this time purchase the NIGHTTIME version.
5. Be very particular dispensing medication, as you learned how this could go horribly wrong on your wedding day if you start medicating yourself all willy-nilly out of desperation.
6. Sleep.  Anywhere.  You're sick and people will understand.
7. Don't let people near you "because I'm really sick." (Oh, NOW you're careful!)
8. Be pathetic.  Especially around those who potentially could have given the cold back to you.  If they are annoying to you because of some other reason, feel free to add extra guilt.
9. Feel better, but keep the pathetic thing going.  Sympathy helps.
10. Start diagnosing everyone around you who looks ill or tells you they think they have allergies.  "Oh, no!  You're SICK.  You should go home and take something and rest!" because clearly you are better at bossing people around than you are at listening to your own advice. (Stubborn much?)

I can appreciate those over the counter medications.  I respect them after overdosing on multiple kinds on my wedding day (my poor sister-in-law was summoning Saints to try to help me because there was really nothing else to do.  Only a Holy entity was going to fix that shit.)  

And I praise them after being seriously ill and pregnant and unable to take anything other  than Tylenol (because it's smart to go to a huge casino 3 weeks before giving birth....there's no germs there!  Who would ever guess I would become so ill I had to sleep in a chair? Casinos are so sanitary!  UGH!)

Allie is still coughing and it breaks my heart every time she has congested coughing spells.  Thank God for Hylands cough syrup.  The homeopathic stuff seems to work quite well and she doesn't clamp her hands over her mouth every time we give it to her, so it mustn't taste so bad either.  

She's such a little trooper.  Even feeling poorly, she still has the energy to play or go to the park.  I hope she continues to be a little BA (bad ass) into her adulthood.  Although I would prefer that she be a RBA (realistic bad ass) and recognize the symptoms, identify the cause, and treat until recovered, instead of being a SA (stubborn ass) like her mother.

I wish you all good health and I'll be back soon.  I have lots to tell.  There was traveling, along with  birthday festivities, while I was gone.  I may have an interesting little ditty to tell somewhere in there.

May the force of immunity be with you!

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