I awoke this morning at 3:30 with a sharp pain in my stomach and nausea that was only made worse by the fact I’d just fallen asleep an hour or two earlier. I don’t know if I had food poisoning (everything I ate on Sunday was homemade and no one else who ate it got sick) or if the ennui and malaise I felt all day yesterday was actually a 12- or 24-hour stomach bug. I got back to sleep around 4:30 and when I got up again at 7, I was just fine and dandy — just a wee bit tired.

When I got home at 6:30, I decided to take a nap before going running because I was feeling pretty drained. A nap was taken (to the strains of Barber’s Adagio for Strings) and then I got a call from a friend asking if I was busy and if I could run to the store for him because he and his roommate had both gotten seriously sick within the span of a few hours last night - fevers, aches, chills, runny noses, the whole nine. It seemed to me (and I told him) that it might be the flu that was going around my workplace a few weeks ago; I heard it dubbed the Norwalk strain, easily recognized by the ridiculously rapid onset (you go from perfectly fine to “ready to collapse” in 2-4 hours) and severe symptoms (head congestion, sore throat/cough, fever of 102/103°F, body aches, extreme fatigue). The good news is that everyone I know at work who had it (and there were several peeps) noted that it ran its course quickly - within 2-3 days, at which point you suddenly feel fine again, if a little tired and hungry.

So I went to the supermarket and got them Gatorade (hydration!), about 10 cans of soup (including chicken with alphabet noodles and two cartons of organic roasted red pepper soup because it’s sooo tasty and a nice change from chicken), French bread pizzas (comfort food!) and tissues (with lotion, of course).

In some strange way, I’ve managed to avoid illness despite these circulating virii ans bacteria, and even despite my early morning ick. I can’t really remember the last time I was sick with a legitimate illness or even had a fever. I have bad seasonal allergies, but those are just annoying, not contagious and may keep me down for a day or two because the decongestants make me so drowsy. I had a horrifically bad reaction to a new medication my doctor wanted me to try back in August (clearly, I am not taking it), but that wasn’t an illness either. It did, however, result in 16 solid hours of sleep, an inability to hold down food and two sick days while I regained my strength).

Some may be horrified that I’m writing this without knocking on a whole cord of wood, but I’m not superstitious. That sort of thing goes hand-in-hand with a belief in other things that I don’t believe in (fate, destiny, luck, ghosts, etc.) I mean, if I believe in bad luck coming from walking under a ladder or “jinxing” myself, but am saying I’m an atheist because of logic, science and reason, I’m truly a bigger fool than most people think I am.

And for saying this, my parents would probably say that God will punish me and that I’ll get sick soon - just wait and see. I’ve heard it many, many times. For example, when I was younger if I talked back to my mother and then accidentally spilled milk or dropped a fork a few hours later, she would tell me that was God punishing me for talking back to her earlier. Or if we fought, she would tell me that God would pay me back later. Yup. If that had been before my job loss, car accident and first severe depressive episodes/breakdowns, I might’ve bought into it. But I was a good, happy person before those things happened, so it wasn’t payback from Angry God. Sorry.

In case you’re wondering, the Polish phrase is “Bozia cie skarała” (pronounced, “Boh-zhya chye skarawa” - I’m not doing the international phonetic alphabet here… this is close enough.)