After the love-bug graced us with it’s sappy presence for Valentine’s Day last week, it seems like a new bug has fluttered into the hearts (or sinuses) of many.  I have been stacking my pillows a mile high (so I can breath at night) and rushing out of class to blow my nose for quite some time now. While friends are going out to the bars, I’m surrendering with a tie blanket and Lauren Conrad’s new book (don’t judge – I’m sick). And when I make it to class in the midst of a blotchy-faced sneezing attack, I try to sit in the back so no one can hear my whistling nose and staggered breathing.

It’s a hard knock life, being ill. Especially at the age of 21, while attending college where you are hardly ever alone, and (I am convinced) the terms ‘Sunday Funday’ and ‘Thirsty Thursday’ were invented. It’s not like it used to be, back in elementary school, when you’d fake a cough just to stay home and enjoy that coveted sick day. Now, well, I really miss those sick days… Read More »

FML.

You roll out from underneath your covers to turn off your alarm clock. You’ve got a very busy day ahead of you: three classes, a group meeting and a date with your roommates to catch up on Glee from the past three weeks. Everything has been so busy lately you haven’t had time to eat a meal, let alone get your weekly dose of Finn. If you’re not sleeping, you’re in class, and if you’re not there you’re in the library, oftentimes well past midnight.

And it’s finally catching up to you.

As you try to rouse yourself out of bed, you feel it. Your head hurts, you can’t swallow and your whole body just feels achy. You walk to the bathroom to wash up, hoping it’s just one of those “I slept with my mouth open” deals; it will go away in a few minutes.

Only it doesn’t. In fact, bending over the sink to splash some water on your face makes you dizzy and angers the little men pounding hammers against the inside of your skull. It’s official: you’re sick.

“Oh god. Could it be Swine Flu??”

You crawl back to your room and sit down at your computer. You enter your symptoms into WebMD figure out your diagnosis/rule out any deadly diseases. You learn that you either have the flu… or meningitis. Either way, you need to take your temperature, which you cannot do since you don’t have a thermometer. Maybe you can just sleep it off?

Before getting back into bed, you send a quick email your professors/group members/roommates to let them know that you are sick. You do not mention the word “flu”; you don’t need anyone sending you to the Swine Flu quarantine, thankyouverymuch. Read More »