I got the flu the day before finals week the fall semester of my senior year. I did managed to drag my ass to my finals, actually, though I’m sure that’s why I only got a C in my biomedical lab class.
I got over the flu in time to have a nice Christmas*, but a week after spring classes began it came back. So another couple weeks of the flue, and then it either “moved down” my respiratory track, or just weakened my immune system, because I then had pneumonia for two weeks.
*Which was good, because the year before I had what we dubbed “death sickness” at my fraternity. I went home on a Saturday, and that Sunday I started vomiting every fifteen to thirty minutes for a full day (obviously it wasn’t long before it was just dry heaves.) A little diarrhea, too. It lasted almost three days, though the other two were nowhere near as bad as day one1 (only every hour or two with the vomiting.) When I came back from X-mas break, we found out about five other guys also got sick over break, and then about ten more got sick after break. We never did find out who we all got it from in the first place.
My father and I flew to Colorado to surprise his favorite brother on Favorite Brother’s birthday. Dad collapsed at the Denver airport and died in a nearby hospital.
My father died right after I arrived at my duty station in Germany. I don’t think I was even over the jet lag yet. It was his birthday.
My wife decided she no longer wanted to be married to me and informed me while I was deployed to Iraq. That happened way back in…actually it’s happening now.
I had to have surgery to remove my bottom wisdom teeth three days before my 14th birthday. I ALWAYS eat pizza on my birthday. I tried, but…
My period was very irregular in my teenage years, and I’d made up my mind that I was going to lose my virginity with my long-time crush during the last weekend I was in town before I left for college. You guessed it - Aunt Flo came to visit. I was afraid it would squick him out if I told him why I was turning him down, so I made up some lame excuse. I left for college, he moved away, and I never saw him again.
Years back my wife decided to quit a relatively good-paying job due to depression and anxiety. About a month later I was suddenly fired over something trivial. The brand-new manager subsequently fired everyone else in the department, and I eventually realized she wanted to bring in all her own people, but at first I thought it was a judgment about me.
So then we had NO income in a bad economy. Did wonders for the anxiety too.
(Things are much better now. Well, except for the economy. :P)
There’s something weird about E-5, that is, five days before election day. On E-5 in the 2006 election, I broke my ankle; on E-5 in the 2008 election, my laptop was stolen. Very inconvenient in the absolute pandemonium that characterizes the last week of a campaign.
A week after quitting my job and moving to Florida, I came down with the mother of all facial nerve infections. Besides the physical pain and loss of balance, the left side of my face looked like it had melted. The plan originally had been for us to live on the profits of our house sale and my generous bonus until I got another job. It was a year before I was physically able to work (2 months ago, as a matter of fact, when we were down to our last pennies and I got a new job). We look back on it as my year-long vacation.
If the infection had occurred a week earlier, I would have still been employed and had insurance coverage, and been covered by my company’s disability. Thank god for COBRA, anyway, even though it cost over $1000 a month.
Also, I got called into jury duty for a trial that began on my very first day of graduate school. The trial lasted for three weeks. Man, that was one tough semester.