Down With the Sickness

bwuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuh

Wee Martin and I are often accused of being the same person; and in all honesty it's not an unfair one. We share mannerisms, turns of phrase, vocal cadence, love of coffee and Gilmore Girls (simultaneously or individually), and have perfected the Death Glare.

Sometimes though, we work backwards. I used to be the wildly successful one while she had problems learning how to read and making her own friends, whereas now she's objectively the more successful sister. She used to be a huge worrywart--to the point where she was prescribed ulcer medicine as an 8 year-old, and I was fairly carefree.

As I've grown, I've developed into a deceptively calm nervous wreck. Worst Case Scenarios are my specialty, and always my first conclusion. Because this has manifested itself as I've been maturing, I've also figured out ways to cope with it.

You see: by reassuring myself that I've never, not once, been confronted with a WCS, good ol' left brain can show me a venn diagram that looks something like this:

Therefore: by panicking I am guaranteeing a benign result. Case in point:

I woke up this morning with an annoying tickle in the back of my throat. "Great" I thought, "I hope I'm not catching Durbin's cold". Although I must admit, in my now-feverish state it's almost nice to be able to share this experience with him, far away though he may be. I went to work and the tickle turned into post-nasal drip soreness. I ran some very successful errands, and by 4pm I started to suspect that I wasn't going to be able to vitamin-C this away. I started realizing I was cold despite continuing to wear my jacket indoors, and by 7pm I was a shivering, vomiting mess. My stomach hurts, my back hurts, every hair on my body hurts. I took a bath to try to futilely try to warm up, and took the effort in what felt like an ice bath to shave my legs so at least they wouldn't have the painful hairs.

I'm convinced I have H1N1, and I'm convinced that, with my luck, I have some undiagnosed heart condition and that I'm going to die in my sleep tonight. I'm thinking I should call Alex and leave him a voicemail to tell him that I love him one last time, that I should call Linda and have her tell me how stupid I am, that I should write some epic blog entry that will bring meaning to my life.

Fortunately, we have the above venn diagram. So, while at the moment my state of nausea is being exacerbated by a clenching worry of impending mortal expiration, statistically I will be alive, if only marginally well tomorrow when I wake up to go judge Richard's debate class.

Wish me luck!
CMart