Stuffy head, runny nose, head hurts and the sneezing fits – five, six, seven in a row – it’s exhausting.  I’m pretty sure I dodged the flu, but the common cold has caught up with me, and it’s no fun. Being sick as an adult has no positive aspects to it that I can think of.  Sick enough, I’ll go to bed for part of the day, but that’s hard to enjoy because either I’m sleeping or I feel lousy.  Meanwhile, dinner, driving, laundry, correcting as needed for the rest of the day.  Where’s the sympathy?  Not much around here.

I can finally admit I was a sickly child, probably the sickliest of the six of us kids.   Pale, wan, skinny, picky eater, frequent trips to the doctor for sore throats, coughs and stomach aches.  I’m the one who had pneumonia in third grade, where I missed almost a month of school, and my mother had to bathe me in cold water to get the temp down. I was also one of the two to get my tonsils removed after countless bouts of tonsillitis – what I guess now is strep throat. 

But there was a kind of upside to childhood sickness: time alone, time to read, watching the old black and white morning movies, and my mother, the knowing and comforting nurse, all to myself.  Ginger ale, and toast, and chicken and rice soup, served to me in bed.  No having to get up early and out into the frosty mornings.  Time for my imagination to wander around the room and out the window and into the universe.  Once the symptoms subsided and I was in recuperation mode, it was rather lovely and luxurious. Ah, the sick room – I remember it fondly.

Doesn’t work that way around here. By and large, my guys rarely get sick, and that’s a good thing.  Mostly I have to credit my husband’s hardy genes; I can’t remember the last time he’s taken an actual sick day.  For years, my boys didn’t see the doctor except for annual check-ups, and when I went to get my older son’s prescription filled at the pharmacy for an acne drug, they had no record of him.  A couple ear-aches, passing colds, and the occasional sports injury. But we had no need for prescription coverage until the last couple years, mainly due to those expensive acne drugs.

When the boys are home sick, it’s TV or computer if they’re up to it. Mostly they sleep. It’s almost never more than a day at a time, and my older guy has taken on his father’s approach of bulldozing through most of life’s problems, including sickness, mainly because he doesn’t want to miss practice. Sure, I take their temperatures, and insist on going for a throat culture if it’s something lingering, but sickness is a very, very small part of their routines.  Unlike me, the sick child.

Now, not so much.  I try to take care of myself, eat well, get sleep and exercise, etc. Still, I’m the “delicate” one.  Only now my mom is hundreds of miles away in PA, and there’s no one to soothe my brow, sit on the side of my bed, or bring me ginger-ale.  It’s just no fun being sick anymore.