Be not sick too late, nor well too soon
–Benjamin Franklin
For God’s sake, please just stop coughing!
–My Mom
When I’m sick, there are a few things I always like to do right off the bat: whine, and complain.
When I’m tired of whining and complaining, which is (I think) fairly soon, I like to think of all the things that are good about being sick. No, really. I’m not kidding. Yes, sometimes I really am that much of a Pollyanna. I just wear a sarcastic bitch outer shell. Hush.
What could possibly be good about being home sick?
Well.
There’s being thankful that you didn’t get too sick to go to the football game, so you got to see your fabulous friends and family. And also being thankful that you will probably be well before the next game.
Being able to drink hot tea with all the honey you want without worrying about the caffeine keeping you up all night. You’ll be up coughing all night anyway, so who the fuck cares about the caffeine. Put some whiskey in that tea if the cough gets too bad. Oh shoot. I’m out of honey. Well, sugar works too.
Bonus about drinking hot tea: I love my red cast iron teapot with the dragon on it.
If you have a sore throat, you can eat a lot of popsicles.
Spending the day on the couch under a fuzzy blanket reading simple minded books or watching simple minded television because you’re all addled by cold medicine. Tomorrow I may read something really brainy like one of the Oz books. Or something Sookie Stackhouse-ish.
Plus you can wear pajamas all day if you want. No one cares what you wear when you’re sick. Yes, I do still put on black eyeliner.
When you have a bad cough, you can run the hot shower all day and tell people it’s for your lungs. That is partially true. Really, though, it’s just about the super hot showers.
When you are sick, you can enjoy the not-entirely-unpleasant feeling of being addled by cold medicine. Hey, sometimes finding the silver lining is kind of a stretch.
You can also get away with not keeping anything in the house clean. For one thing, you are sick. You can’t clean. For another, no one will come and visit because you are sick. That means, no one but the people who live with you will ever see it.
Being happy that I have a job that can live without me for a day or two if I have Black Lung and laryngitis. And health insurance in case I need to go to the doctor and beg for codeine.
Brief note regarding the quote from my Mom. Yes, she really said that. In her defense, no one in our house had been sleeping because I had my annual Very Bad Cough. The VBC would traditionally last for a few weeks. At the time, we were all in the car driving up to Gramma’s house for a holiday meal. Trapped in a car with me and my plague cough, she finally cracked. My cough should be patented as a weapon. It’s kind of like living with a tubercular seal with croup. It’s bad. Bad enough to keep the whole house awake. Bad enough that my Grampa would dope me up with tea and bourbon to knock me out for at least a few hours so everyone else could sleep. Bad enough that when I got sick once while staying at a B&B at the coast, I went down to breakfast to find the all of the other guests discussing how awful it was that someone had kept everyone on 2 floors awake with their incessant coughing. I don’t stay at B&Bs any more. Give me that anonymity of a hotel.
If you think I’m exaggerating, just ask my Mom and brother! There isn’t, as far as I can tell, a silver lining to my cough.
It just makes me wish I had a silver lining for my lungs.
