A rant about being sick.

Serious illnesses I’ve had:

  1. Pneumonia, summer 1990 or so. Recovered fine.
  2. Strep throat, twice, early to mid 1990s (elementary school age).
  3. Chicken pox, 1989.

Here are the last four times I was sick:

  1. Spring of 2005, stomach bug. Cured in about 36 hours by time.
  2. Spring of 2006, head cold. Cured in three days with sleep and OTC drugs.
  3. Summer 2007, stomach bug. Cured in about 36 hours by time.
  4. Current, head cold. Now on day six, still feel like crap.

I don’t know what the hell happened to my immune system. I’ve already had my fucking cold for the winter. So I finally broke down and saw the nurse on campus (we don’t have a doctor). I managed to get through two and a half years with my only visit to the student health office being to request an ice pack for a sprained ankle. I haven’t been to a doctor for actual illness since I was in early high school. As a general rule, I don’t really do sick. I’m remarkably lucky that way.

But this has dragged on and on and on, so I swallowed my pride and saw the nurse. Her verdict: No lasting fever, so probably not the flu or a sinus infection. Starting to take my allergy meds again may or may not help, but won’t hurt. Getting a humidifier for my room probably will help. If I don’t feel better by Monday, go see her again because she thinks I’m on the way to bronchitis and/or a sinus infection. Also I might want to try just plain cough syrup, without the other Day-Quil stuff in it, because that might reduce the mental fogginess it engulfs me in.

I’m one of those people who, as a general rule, doesn’t get sick, and I’d like to go back to that now, please. Alternately, if I must be sick, can’t it be something I can do something about? Some nice bacterial infection where they say, “Here, take these antibiotics, you’ll feel better within 24 hours,” please?

And the worst part is I don’t even have the energy to be really pissed off (and hell if I know what, exactly, I’m directing my anger at). All that energy is going into horking up big gobs of mucous.

Grumble.

Sounds like you need to start skipping spring.

Me too. Unfortunately, it seems the “cube flue” is going around. Everybody in my office building has been coughing for the last 2 or 3 weeks. I’ve been hacking up some pretty nasty stuff in the shower for a week and a half now. It’s pretty lame, really. :frowning:

It’s been that way here too. I’ve been lucky so far, but I dread getting it too.

I was that way too Ninja, when I was a kid I was never sick. Met my GP for the first when I was 15. (I’m sure I had my boosters and all that, but never had to go for being sick) Then around age 20 my body started falling apart. It really sucks.

Yeah. Part of it is I have really, really bad allergies, which seems to make it easier to pick up bugs. In fact, when I saw the nurse today and she stuck the…light-on-a-stick-that-you-look-through-thingy up my nose (which, btw, was really unpleasant), she said, “You have fairly bad allergies, don’t you?” Apparently, those in the know can tell by the color of the inside of your nose or something.

:frowning: That’s what scares me. I have this sudden fear that this is the start of Adult Illnesses, and I’m growing out of the “five hours of sleep, eat nothing but crap, party hard, still bounce back from anything without problem” stage of my life.

Google says bronchitis can last for anywhere from a few days to several weeks. I cannot have a chronic horrible cough for several weeks.

One cold/bug per year doesn’t seem that bad. Are you living in a dorm? Maybe you’re just being exposed to more people’s germs and you’ll go back to not getting sick when you leave school.

I used to get fairly bad allergies when I was younger and living in NM. Heck, NinjaChick and I kinda traded places. She left PA to go to school in NM and I left NM to go to school in PA. But what’s funny is that I wasn’t allergic to anything in PA and now that I’m back in NM I’m not really allergic to anything here either. It’s like 4 years of PA allergens reset my body to being non-allergic to anything.

Sorry you’re feeling bad. Not sure I can suggest anything.

Kiddo, you and me are on the same page.

I went 26 years with hardly being sick a day of my life, but I feel like those times are catching up.

I’ve come back from visiting my 87 year old grandma in the hospital, she’s had a bad cold and was dehydrated. She also has two dysfunctional legs, two hip replacements, a bad heart, and a forgetful memory.

I want to die when I’m 60.