Down With The Sickness
Originally, I had intended to attach a picture to this update that had something to do with illness in general. Following my usual routine for finding images for my blog, I did a Google image search for 'disease', forgetting that SafeSearch was off. The things I saw were so hideous that I think I may, in fact, be sick all over again. My legs are kind of tingling, and not in a good way. Always use SafeSearch.
The More You Know!
Yeah, I see you there, Thailand. Don't you try and hide. I know where you live. You live in Thailand.
When people say, “I’m sick”, there’s basically two kinds of sick that they’re talking about: Runny nose, coughing sick, or gross stomach illness sick. By all accounts, the preferable kind of sick is the runny nose sick, because that’s a perfectly good excuse to take off work/school and spend the day watching Jim Carrey movies.* Sure, it’s not fun to have a runny nose and a cough, but it’s a worthwhile price to pay so that you can put your entire life on hold and catch up on sleep.
*I recommend Jim Carrey movies not because I’m a huge fan of the man’s career, but because they’re actually scientifically proven as a cold remedy, and by “scientifically proven” I mean “My Dad says so.” Two years ago, he was lying on our couch, ravaged by the flu, and happened to catch most of Ace Ventura: Pet Detective on TBS, and by the time it was over he was feeling a lot better. He now maintains that Jim Carrey’s early movies have a detrimental effect on bacteria in the same way they have a detrimental effect on brain cells, and that watching The Mask and Dumb and Dumber back to back could probably cure cancer.
And then, of course, there is the gross stomach illness kind of sick. If afflictions were TV characters, a cold would be The Penguin from the 1960s Batman show, while any stomach illness would be Tony Soprano. With this sort of illness, you’re not lying on the couch in front of the TV, you’re spending a lot of quality time in the vicinity of a toilet, making some of the most horrible noises and smells that a human being can make. It’s during these bouts of sickness that you spend a lot of time observing the décor in your bathroom and wishing that you’d installed a TV in front of the toilet with a stack of Jim Carrey movies at the ready.
I am proud to inform you that from Wednesday up until about yesterday, I was gross stomach illness sick. It is not fun to be gross stomach illness sick when you have to walk down a long hallway and around a corner to use a communal restroom – keep this in mind the next time you’re planning on catching a norovirus. I don’t quite know what did this to me, but I’m pretty sure it has to do with the fact that I ate Thai food for the first time on Tuesday night.
Thailand, you have not made a good first impression. This is no way to treat someone who was interested enough in your culture to pay $6.00 for a meal, $6.00 that could’ve gone toward an Xbox 360, or food that wasn’t laced with motherfucking Drain-O. I had my doubts when I heard that American businessmen fly to you in order to have sex with children, but I was going to let that one slide if your cuisine was at least decent – I mean, hey, I’ve seen the business majors here do a lot of really disgusting things, and pedophilia isn’t necessarily the worst of them. Instead, not only did your overpriced meal make a hasty and uncomfortable exit from my body, but so did pretty much every other meal I’ve had since – evidently, you didn’t just want me to not enjoy your meal only, you wanted me to not enjoy every other meal I consumed afterwards too. Well, congratulations, Thailand – it’s on.
Getting sick in college is all kinds of awkward: For one thing, your symptoms are very public, and for another, you can’t turn to Mom for help anymore. When I lived at home, I would always go to my Mom with medical inquiries, which would start with me saying “Mom, my _____ hurts – is that cancer?” and would end with her saying “No, you idiot, here’s a band aid/Ibuprofen, dinner’s at 7:00.” As my Mom is so very far away, I’ve instead come to rely on the University Health Center, a clinic located across the street from where I live. And this, my friends, is the real reason that being sick in college is awkward – you’ve got to tell a complete stranger that you’ve got diarrhea. In a quiet waiting room. Within earshot of beautiful girls waiting for their emergency contraception after last night’s frat party. I suppose if it was really that big of an issue for me, I could have written my condition on a piece of paper and slid it across the desk to the nurse, but the thing is, I honestly don’t know how to spell diarrhea without the help of Spellcheck. Have you ever looked at that word? What’s with that H in there, or the E? And did this word, the word that we use to describe frequent and neigh-uncontrollable pooping, really deserve two Rs? I think not. I think one would have been enough. In any sense, I had to either tell the woman, conversationally, that I had a scorching case of the trots, or horribly misspell the word diarrhea on a cocktail napkin – I opted to just tell her, because if I wrote down “I’ve got diarea”, then I wouldn’t just look like an idiot, I’d look like an idiot with diarrhea, and nobody wants that.
Have I mentioned that I’m on the Dean’s List?
A nurse took me back to an examining room and I enthralled her with the details of my gastrointestinal adventures thus far. She listened with rapt attention, told me that I’d most likely caught some sort of bug, and recommended that I not take any medicines but simply let the affliction run its course. I pointed out to her that every time I went to the bathroom I was more or less playing out the D-Day scene from Saving Private Ryan in my colon, but she would not listen, and in the end I left without any high powered prescription anti-diarrhea drugs. However, they didn’t give me any shots and they didn’t try to put anything in my butt, so all things considered I think it was a pretty good visit to the doctor’s.
I’m doing much better now, though, thanks for asking. For the first time in days I’ve been able to return to the nonstop diet of stir-fry and Diet Coke that maintains my wretched shell of a body. And I guess that’s good thing about gross stomach illness – once it’s over, there’s a little while there where you don’t take anything for granted. For example – I haven’t gone to the bathroom in a few hours, and I had a muffin earlier with no negative repercussions. Most weekends that would be par for the course, but right now I feel like a king. An incredibly lame king, perhaps, but a king nonetheless.
Truman Capps does realize the irony in being reluctant to share his intestinal malady with a registered nurse and then posting all the same information on the Internet for anyone to read. It was either that, or not make a bunch of perfectly acceptable poop jokes. He is very comfortable with his decision.
The More You Know!
Yeah, I see you there, Thailand. Don't you try and hide. I know where you live. You live in Thailand.
When people say, “I’m sick”, there’s basically two kinds of sick that they’re talking about: Runny nose, coughing sick, or gross stomach illness sick. By all accounts, the preferable kind of sick is the runny nose sick, because that’s a perfectly good excuse to take off work/school and spend the day watching Jim Carrey movies.* Sure, it’s not fun to have a runny nose and a cough, but it’s a worthwhile price to pay so that you can put your entire life on hold and catch up on sleep.
*I recommend Jim Carrey movies not because I’m a huge fan of the man’s career, but because they’re actually scientifically proven as a cold remedy, and by “scientifically proven” I mean “My Dad says so.” Two years ago, he was lying on our couch, ravaged by the flu, and happened to catch most of Ace Ventura: Pet Detective on TBS, and by the time it was over he was feeling a lot better. He now maintains that Jim Carrey’s early movies have a detrimental effect on bacteria in the same way they have a detrimental effect on brain cells, and that watching The Mask and Dumb and Dumber back to back could probably cure cancer.
And then, of course, there is the gross stomach illness kind of sick. If afflictions were TV characters, a cold would be The Penguin from the 1960s Batman show, while any stomach illness would be Tony Soprano. With this sort of illness, you’re not lying on the couch in front of the TV, you’re spending a lot of quality time in the vicinity of a toilet, making some of the most horrible noises and smells that a human being can make. It’s during these bouts of sickness that you spend a lot of time observing the décor in your bathroom and wishing that you’d installed a TV in front of the toilet with a stack of Jim Carrey movies at the ready.
I am proud to inform you that from Wednesday up until about yesterday, I was gross stomach illness sick. It is not fun to be gross stomach illness sick when you have to walk down a long hallway and around a corner to use a communal restroom – keep this in mind the next time you’re planning on catching a norovirus. I don’t quite know what did this to me, but I’m pretty sure it has to do with the fact that I ate Thai food for the first time on Tuesday night.
Thailand, you have not made a good first impression. This is no way to treat someone who was interested enough in your culture to pay $6.00 for a meal, $6.00 that could’ve gone toward an Xbox 360, or food that wasn’t laced with motherfucking Drain-O. I had my doubts when I heard that American businessmen fly to you in order to have sex with children, but I was going to let that one slide if your cuisine was at least decent – I mean, hey, I’ve seen the business majors here do a lot of really disgusting things, and pedophilia isn’t necessarily the worst of them. Instead, not only did your overpriced meal make a hasty and uncomfortable exit from my body, but so did pretty much every other meal I’ve had since – evidently, you didn’t just want me to not enjoy your meal only, you wanted me to not enjoy every other meal I consumed afterwards too. Well, congratulations, Thailand – it’s on.
Getting sick in college is all kinds of awkward: For one thing, your symptoms are very public, and for another, you can’t turn to Mom for help anymore. When I lived at home, I would always go to my Mom with medical inquiries, which would start with me saying “Mom, my _____ hurts – is that cancer?” and would end with her saying “No, you idiot, here’s a band aid/Ibuprofen, dinner’s at 7:00.” As my Mom is so very far away, I’ve instead come to rely on the University Health Center, a clinic located across the street from where I live. And this, my friends, is the real reason that being sick in college is awkward – you’ve got to tell a complete stranger that you’ve got diarrhea. In a quiet waiting room. Within earshot of beautiful girls waiting for their emergency contraception after last night’s frat party. I suppose if it was really that big of an issue for me, I could have written my condition on a piece of paper and slid it across the desk to the nurse, but the thing is, I honestly don’t know how to spell diarrhea without the help of Spellcheck. Have you ever looked at that word? What’s with that H in there, or the E? And did this word, the word that we use to describe frequent and neigh-uncontrollable pooping, really deserve two Rs? I think not. I think one would have been enough. In any sense, I had to either tell the woman, conversationally, that I had a scorching case of the trots, or horribly misspell the word diarrhea on a cocktail napkin – I opted to just tell her, because if I wrote down “I’ve got diarea”, then I wouldn’t just look like an idiot, I’d look like an idiot with diarrhea, and nobody wants that.
Have I mentioned that I’m on the Dean’s List?
A nurse took me back to an examining room and I enthralled her with the details of my gastrointestinal adventures thus far. She listened with rapt attention, told me that I’d most likely caught some sort of bug, and recommended that I not take any medicines but simply let the affliction run its course. I pointed out to her that every time I went to the bathroom I was more or less playing out the D-Day scene from Saving Private Ryan in my colon, but she would not listen, and in the end I left without any high powered prescription anti-diarrhea drugs. However, they didn’t give me any shots and they didn’t try to put anything in my butt, so all things considered I think it was a pretty good visit to the doctor’s.
I’m doing much better now, though, thanks for asking. For the first time in days I’ve been able to return to the nonstop diet of stir-fry and Diet Coke that maintains my wretched shell of a body. And I guess that’s good thing about gross stomach illness – once it’s over, there’s a little while there where you don’t take anything for granted. For example – I haven’t gone to the bathroom in a few hours, and I had a muffin earlier with no negative repercussions. Most weekends that would be par for the course, but right now I feel like a king. An incredibly lame king, perhaps, but a king nonetheless.
Truman Capps does realize the irony in being reluctant to share his intestinal malady with a registered nurse and then posting all the same information on the Internet for anyone to read. It was either that, or not make a bunch of perfectly acceptable poop jokes. He is very comfortable with his decision.