I Told You I Was Sick.

"In all affairs, it's a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted." - Bertrand Russell

I used to get the flu like Job got a gentle ribbing from Yaweh. I would spend weeks single-handedly driving up the stock price of Proctor & Gamble through my incessant use of Kleen-X. As a normal, American male I naturally thought I could just fight it off eventually, but "eventually" always seemed to involve a trip to the doctor after about the third week.

Then in December of 2000 I flew to Paris for the holidays and (I'm guessing) caught the flu on board the aeroplane. I suffered for a couple of days before I had my hosts contact a physician. He came right over to the apartment (!!!!!), did a quick examination, told me I had influenza, and gave me a handful of prescriptions. Total cost was about $50.

Yeah, that's the kind of health care we all deserve.

So the next fall I got smart and started getting regular flu shots. They worked like magic and for the rest of the decade I was flu-free... until this past New Years Eve.

Sigh.

From what I gather flu shots are a lot like condoms. They work great most of the time but occasionally one little clever bugger gets through and the party is on! That's what happened as I and my sweetie twirled our tootsies off at a post-Xmas bash amidst a hundred other sweaty polka/cha-cha/samba dancers. Somehow some freak mutagen blew past Security and proceeded to wreak havoc in my server room.

So my New Years Eve involved a pizza, a GF who seemingly never gets the flu (Grrr!)and the Muppet Xmas Carol. Twice. (Director's commentary.) All in all, it coulda been a lot worse.

I'm on the mend now but I'm not depressed about it. I still have faith in the immunological system and I'll be there next October when it's time to roll up my sleeve at my local grocery store.

Sacre bleu!

=mike=