On being sick

Well, I've had the bad fortune to be Sick for the past 5 days. Now don't look so shocked, we've all done it. I'm just willing to admit it. I Am Sick. Fortunately, it's a fairly obvious sick. A sneezing, sniffling, pale in the face, squeeky in the voice kind of sick. That kind of sick is nice because nobody doubts that you're sick. You get some sympathy, people cut you some slack when you screw up stuff at work. They assume that you're actually a competent person acting like an incompetent person because you're sick. How little they know. One of my favorite Obvious Sicknesses is when you lose your voice. Very Dramatic, lots of attention, and all it costs you is the ability to communiate coherently. For some of us that's not much of a change in functioning anyway.

The annoying sick is that kind that is not readily apparent. You're hurting, you're tired, you're dizzy, and you look great! Everyone thinks you're ready to party and you're ready to puke. So you have to somehow contrive a way to look as miserable as you feel. Just so they don't think you're just slacking off. Perhaps a slight wheeze to the voice, a pained expression of the face, a hand held theatrically to your forehead. Mumbling softly "I wish I would just die." Things like that. Then they finally get that you, too, are sick, but with a Stealth Sickness. The kind that flies in under the radar. Like flesh eating bacteria without the flesh eating part.

Sometimes, though, it's a relief to be sick at all because you at least have a reason to feel like crap. An even worse phenomenon, than Obvious Sick or Stealth Sick, is Not Sick But Miserable. You get very little sympathy for that one, even if you do all the dramatic things you pull for Stealth Sick. And you can't call in to work Miserable. They just don't care. They figure you're paid to be miserable so you may as well drag your miserable butt in there and be miserable on the clock. You can't skip family gatherings because you don't want other people to catch Miserable either. They all have it already. They just want you to come to make sure yours is at full strength as well. You could miss a date because you're Miserable, but that kind of goes against the whole point of dating, where you're trying to convince your date that you're not a Miserable Bastard. Yup, Miserable often ends up having to be a Stealth condition as well. Which is just, well, miserable.

So I guess when you put it that way, I'm a lucky bastard. Here I am with an honest to goodness case of Obvious Sick. Any misery is biologically driven. Lucky, lucky me :o)