So let me be very clear, men in general are courageous in battle, will protect their offspring with the voraciousness of a badger in heat, will heroically sacrifice life and limb for their fallen brothers, and will even spend an afternoon shopping with their wives in a fabric store, but if they get a sniffle or a tummy ache, God help them! I consider myself a pretty healthy dude. I run marathons, work out with weights, eat tofu and kale, and take enough vitamins to support a small refugee village, but occasionally I get sick. This illness is generally not anything like leprosy or flesh eating bacteria sick, it usually is your run of the mill sinusitis. The stuff all of us get now and then (living in the pollen killing fields of Augusta, Ga.) but when I get sick I turn into a whiney, wisp of my former self.
It begins with a sore throat, and generally I assume I have throat cancer or some other malady rather than a cold. Ever since medical school I have had the strange proclivity to develop any disease I was currently studying. At least I developed it in my head. I remember reading about a parasite called Naegleria fowleri. It had the unpleasant habit of burrowing in the brain of unsuspecting, paranoid hosts and gnawing on their cerebrum. The nose is the pathway of the amoeba, so infection occurs most often from diving, water skiing, or performing water sports in which water is forced into the nose. But infections have occurred in people who dunked their heads in hot springs or who cleaned their nostrils with Neti pots filled with untreated tap water. I always knew Neti pots were tools of the devil and this just confirmed it. Even though I had not recently dunked my head in a hot spring (do people really do this?) I had been in a lake, so when I developed a headache I naturally assumed I had a brain eating parasite. Given that this sort of logic was akin to thinking you really had a chance to win the Lotto jackpot, I laid in bed for a day until my headache subsided and reluctantly put writing my will on hold.
I won’t go in to telling you what happened to me when I first started studying yeast infections!
Needless to say, I took this tendency to catch the disease de jour into my older years, modified with the wisdom of aging (yea…right!) so now instead of imagining I am dying of some exotic disease, I simply imagine I am dying of a common disease. My wife could walk into the house with a hatchet in her head and she would not be complaining, in fact she would get the wash out of the dryer, start dinner, and do an online search for Masters rentals before thinking about removing the offending yard tool. I, however, can have a stuffy nose and I lay on the couch, unable to raise my head to sip life giving water, convinced I am hypoxic from oxygen debt, begging for IV Afrin infusions, and complaining about the roughness of the facial tissue. And don’t think about me performing any vital functions like taking out the trash or carrying on a civil conversation. I am near death man! Can’t you see I can’t be bothered with the fact that the kids are setting up a meth lab in the basement.
I have long maintained that the female of the species is both wiser and stronger in constitution than the male. Yes we have more hair, generally. Yes, we are more proud of our body odor and belches. Yes, we relish the role of protector of the hearth and provider of food, shelter, and a diversified 401K. And yes, we like making babies, but the female trumps us majestically when we are weakest; i.e. sick with a cold or tummy ache. She can have a brain eating parasite and still go to work, breast feed, fix the cable, and still look amazing!
