In the course of my life I’ve been sick very few times—actually sick: bedridden and feverish, I mean. I’ve tried to be sick many times at 6 am before going to school; unfortunately, my mother was too smart for that! Then there’s the time I spent two weeks in hospital after having my appendix removed. ‘It was almost peritonitis’, the doctor said. That means it was about to burst and cause all kinds of purulent mayhem inside me. And, of course, there’s the couple of kidney stones I passed and hope to never pass again. But if I were to say I used to fall ill only once every two years, even with something as mild as the common cold, that would be a fair estimation. Sniffles and the few allergies aside, or even the odd irritated throat from that bad habit of breathing through my mouth, I could safely say that until quite recently I’ve always been, if not a poster child, at least a fat rosy Victorian postcard babe of good health. That is, until I came to live in Europe, whereupon everything just fell apart.
As it stands, I now count myself very lucky if I manage to go through six months without getting actually sick at least once: bedridden, feverish—Normally it’s the change of season that does it, if nothing else. But, then, there’s the chronic throbbing sore throats and coughing bouts, and the head colds in midsummer, which baffle me greatly. The sore throats I can somewhat control through large quantities of vitamin C, but that doesn’t mean they’re any less aggravating. I’ve never really learnt to blow my nose, so a runny nose is generally just another use for my sweater sleeves. And head colds are a real pain—literally—but there’s always caffeine and aspirin. It’s the coughs that get on my nerves. They’re basically the worst, for there’s no way of getting rid of them and they usually come about at night, when everything is silent and bleak, so your drama really feels Dickensian.
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