Starve a Fever, Feed a Cold

Sometimes you can do everything right, but bad things happen anyway.  You can avoid smoking your entire life, but get lung cancer from secondhand smoke.  You can work so hard at the job you love, but become disposable overnight.  You can love someone as much as you possibly can, but might ultimately be left heartbroken.  And on a much more common note, you can protect your body and build up your immune system, but you will get sick.

I consider myself a healthy person.  I don't use drugs or tobacco, I drink on the weekends-- and even that isn't an excess of alcohol-- I am not obese or being considered overweight by doctor's standards or society's, and I eat a variety of healthy fruits and vegetables every day.  I'm not perfect by any means-- I do stray every now and then with a bag of barbeque kettle chips, or maybe a few mini peanut butter cups, and I frequently "forget" to go the gym-- but I don't abuse my body.   So it was a little bit of a surprise when the flu decided to inhabit my healthy body and set up shop there for a week.   But of course, I am not invincible.  And the flu doesn't discriminate.

I haven't lived at home in ten years.  Granted, where I live is my "home," but it's not where I grew up.  There is nothing like being sick and having your mother nurture you back to health.  (Sorry Dad!)  When you're young, you think of sick as missed school days, watching movies, and having someone bring you soup.  But when you're older, you're worried about missing work, you are bored with everything on TV, and most likely you have to heat that soup or pour that juice for yourself.  Not to mention, you are responsible for cleaning up after yourself-- disinfecting your apartment, washing the dishes, and making sure your sheets are germ-free for when you're feeling better.  Oh yeah, and also you're the one stuck paying for doctor's visits and medicines out of your own pocket.  When you're an adult, being sick sucks.

I am now on the road to recovery after  being sick for the past few days, and being cooped up in my dirty apartment.  And it's a road paved with Lysol.  Until today, there wasn't a single amount of counter space that wasn't covered with dirty dishes caked in half-eaten soup, bottles of Naked juice with straws tucked inside them, mugs stained with leftover green tea, and little orange medicine bottles that made my kitchen look like a pharmacy.  And that was just one small part of my apartment.  I had piles of dirty laundry and sheets and towels in my living room, and trash collecting in one corner of my bathroom-- in my defense, I had been afraid of getting sick while I was in bed, so I had hastily thrown everything out of the small trash bin so I could keep it bedside just in case.  Today, I tackled the apartment, even though all I wanted to do is sleep.  But it is the first day I've felt better in a week.

It started last week with fever, chills, body aches, headaches, nausea, and swollen glands.  It got a hell of a lot worse after the doctor gave me something that caused a major allergic reaction.  I immediately stopped using that, but am left with a leopard-skin looking, itchy rash.  (I typically try to avoid pharmaceuticals if I can-- that's a whole different story-- but in some severe cases, I get desperate and will try anything.)

When I get sick, I do the same thing: pump myself with vitamin C and echinacea.  My favorite cure-all is Bolthouse Farms C-Boost, but for variety I'll drink Naked Juice. I also consume a lot of green tea and veggie soups. I'm one of those people who seems to always have an appetite, and even when I'm not feeling hungry during sickness, I know I must eat something to get better.

If I can impart any bit of advice through all of this: it's to not take your health for granted, not even for a second.  Oh yeah, and I'm pretty sure the saying "starve a fever, feed a cold" is bogus.