Last updated on 8 December 2020
Share this
Health is not valued until sickness comes. – Thomas Fuller
I’m sick. And as Elin will tell you I slide into a helpless, whiny basketcase with the speed of a bullet train. It started as a little tickle in my throat the other morning. A little spot that hurt when I swallowed. Later, my nose felt plugged and the other night she said I was snoring like someone who needs a C-Pap.
Last night while my daughter was visiting from college I slid further into feeling crappy with what felt like chills and fever, even though I was cool to the touch. This morning my nose was a dam and I sounded like I was in an iron lung. Remember in the 1950’s when polio was still a thing and victims had to be packed into what looked like medical iron caskets with oxygen pumped in to help them breathe? That’s what I sound like.
If I’m sick, obviously I’ve done something wrong.
There is a psychological component that illness always brings for me. Getting sick is tantamount to our friend Abel, a fantastic contractor with whom my wife works in her interior design business, gutting a house to the studs when it’s a room or two that needs work. I want to tear down my entire approach toward living, because if I’m sick, obviously I’ve done something wrong. One’s health is a granite monolith that can’t be cracked or undermined.
Yet, obviously, it can.
It’s this psychological game and name calling I get into with myself, looking for flaws in how I’ve been living and treating myself lately. I start with the recriminations over the amount of sugar I consume during the passing of a day. Like the two chocolate chip cookies I wolfed down two days ago at work. I only ate two.
A colleague keeps a jar of those Hersheys mini candy bars in her office. “My door is always open, ” she says. “Help yourself.” You can’t go in there and take just one Krackle. You need at least five to feel satisfied. And what happens if an almond or a dark chocolate accidentally gets picked up in the process? It wouldn’t be right to put it back.
See what I mean?
When I get sick I blame my entire approach to life as the cause.
The control I exert over my physical body–paying attention to exercise and what I eat–remains easily in place most of the time. Occasionally I fall. And when I get sick I blame my entire approach to life as the cause.
I mean it’s just a cold. It’s not like people, even healthy people, don’t get them. Still, getting sick rocks me to my core.
Growing up, I used to get strep throat once or twice a year. Up until my late teens, I could count on being bedridden with ridiculously high fever for close to a week at a time. Nothing I did seemed to make any difference. Though I realized later that the image I had of myself as some stellar and health-disciplined disciple and the reality of who I was were far apart.
In my days at Nike, when I worked as a field rep, I would inevitably return from sales meetings sick. Here’s how our days went: Arrive in Portland, OR at night. Rise at 5:30am, throw on running clothes and head out with seven or eight of my colleagues for what was billed as an “easy five miles.”. Within a mile, someone would start ratcheting the pace up slightly, little surges we called “short-stepping.” The group reacts and also increases the pace. Before we know it we are all running around 6:30 per mile –which at the time was only about 30 seconds faster than my race pace–and five miles turned into six or seven.
We’d rush into the hotel, shower and with no time for a real breakfast, grab a diet Coke and a doughnut (I know!) and go onto meetings all day. A quick 20-minute nap in the late afternoon before going to dinner and then out till 2 am talking and drinking.
Rise. Run. Meet. Drink. Repeat. For a week. Who would be surprised that someone would get sick?
Later I learned my limits and generally I’ve carried sensible diet, sleep and exercise habits with me. Yet I still get sick and it still confounds me.
Do I take enough vitamins? Am I eating enough greens, protein, minerals, water, enzymes, electrolytes, ions? Do I need to go to bed even earlier? And by the way, should Elin and I put up blackout shades and run a noise-cancelling contraption in our bedroom to ensure hours and hours of healthy REM sleep? Should I spend more time online looking for the best healthy elixirs even if they are obscure in an effort to avoid the common cold/flu?
You might think that I become a little unhinged when I get sick. I see illness like colds and flu as personal failures, as character flaws, because I love Chips Ahoy more than Quinoa. My world goes topsy turvy when I get sick. I probably need to speak to my therapist about this but I think she’s out with a cold.
I see illness like colds and flu as personal failures, as character flaws, because I love Chips Ahoy more than Quinoa.
I know I’m healthier than 98% of you out so why all the drama about a stupid flu? It might be that in spite of my so-called commitment to living a healthy lifestyle I still fall to illness, even what I consider the worst: cancer. I have been a runner for 37 years, a vegetarian for most of my adult life (yes, I’ve fallen off the wagon a couple times, but not lately), someone who appreciates sleep and balance more than the average person. I should be impervious to sickness.
Yet I still got cancer. I still got pneumonia and asthma. I still get sick. Maybe I should just kick my feet up on the table and binge watch Netflix and chow on Pringles®. Maybe my genes have more to say than my lifestyle choices.
Either way, when I feel better I’ll probably go back onto a semi-fanatical dietary cleansing and exercise regimen and I’ll probably get right back on my health soapbox. If you see me you can remind me of this essay and what a hypocrite I am.
###