Flu Vs Me

I have a super immune system. It rarely fails me. When it does, I get very confused and have no idea how to act. Unfortunately, my super immune system (which I’ve named Lemon Pepper, because its strong and I have a pungent odor) is constantly tested because I married a walking germ. Not to say my wife doesn’t practice high quality hygiene, but she works at a germ factory (a germ factory that, like all germ factories, puts too much emphasis on test scores and not enough emphasis on learning). She brings home all sorts of germs. Coughy germs. Flu-ey germs. Syphillis germs. Headaches germs. Etc germs.

Now I’m not one to believe in the whole, “oh you have to wash your hands every time you go to the bathroom rule.” I wash after a relaxing poo if only because the ten minutes prior to a poo I experience incessant ass sweat. My hand appreciates the washing. I’ve never understood this whole, “wash after you pee” thing. First off, my penie is ridiculously clean. He has to be. When my wife isn’t sick, he’s constantly on call. Second off, any handwashing performed is rendered moot by the people who don’t wash their hands and use the same door handle I have to use to leave the bathroom. Third off, in looking at that theory further, washing my hands post-poo also doesn’t make sense. Fourth off, I’d be leery of shaking my hands or sharing a bag of chips with me in the future. Fifth off, back to my point…I don’t believe that you constantly need to wash to stay healthy. I don’t believe germs exist everywhere and grow without abandon unless conquered by a fresh squirt of Dial.

That said, Kelsey’s employment is a germ factory. Kids with snot run rampant. This means Kelsey has the privilege of having a cold from mid-October until late April each year. She occasionally gets the flu too.

Transition to this past weekend: On Saturday night the two of us ate dinner with the in-laws, and then we went home to watch TV on DVD and promptly fell asleep. We’re married, old, and fall asleep on our couch watching TV around 9:30 on a Saturday. We eventually slept-walk to the boudoir, where Kelsey proceeded to thrash about all night like a nightmaring tyke. I could not sleep because of this. At 7:00am I decide it better to go kill Nazis and learn about the past of Superman simultaneously (Call of Duty and Smallville) then to stay in bed with my wife and her crazy legs. At around 9:00 I heard a loud stomping upstairs as Kelsey ran to the bathroom. She promptly threw up all the dinner we ate with the in-laws the night before.

Her day did not get any better. Mine however, was awesome. I killed a ridiculous amount of Nazis and learned that Superman’s origin story has become incredibly convoluted and de-canonized in the last year or two. Regardless, I felt fine all day, and I made sure I was there for Kelsey when she needed me and left her alone when she didn’t want me around.

The next day I woke up and felt fine. Kelsey…not so much. I stepped out of the shower to find my zombie bride standing in the doorway, ready to throw up the nothing she’d consumed in the last 24 hours. As she did so, I quickly got ready for work and left. At work, I did the generic “here’s what happened this weekend” conversation with people and everyone said, “haha, you’ll get sick soon.” I told them I wouldn’t. I told them about Lemon Pepper. I hadn’t had the flu since junior high.

At lunch I drove home to bring Kelsey some Hi-C fruit beverages. I also picked up Mongolian Beef to eat. Let this be a lesson to everyone: when entering a house wherein lies someone with a weak stomach made noticeably weaker by disease, don’t bring in Chinese food. I apologized to Kelsey as I quickly ate the Chinese Food, hugged her, gave her a juice box, and left.

I arrived back to work and could not stop sweating. I felt flush. I was confused. I took a water break with a guy named Kameron, yet to be introduced in this blog, and said, “I need to go home.” I drove home, dry-heaving the entire way. I stopped and bought Sprite for some reason. When I arrived home Kelsey, pale and possibly dead on the couch, asked, “What are you doing here?” I said, “Uh…feel bad.” I took off my work clothes, fell into bed, and slept for two hours. I woke-up and thought to myself, “Chinese Food was the worst idea ever,” before violently throwing it up all over the bathroom. I didn’t chew enough.

I walked back to the bed, slept for fifteen minutes, woke up, vomited, repeat.

On a semi-related note, I’ve had a weird addiction to caffeine recently—averaging five to six coffees/diet sodas a day. Because I threw up all caffeine I’d had that day, I had a killer headache. I tried to take Ibuprofen to curb my headache, but at some point that day my body developed a weird allergy to all things liquid and solid. A sip of water would somehow ingest, multiply by one thousand, and exit through the hole it entered. Kelsey mentioned she needed to go to the germ factory to get her sub plans ready for the next day. I told her I’d go with her. She went to her car as I got ready. The next details are sketchy, I just remember texting her while sprawled out on the bathroom floor that I’m a no go.

I was very disappointed in Lemon Pepper for allowing this to happen. How could it fail me? I never get sick. Transition to this morning…Kelsey wakes up thinking today would be the day she’d be healthy again. It didn't quite happen that way. While Lemon Pepper may not be able to fight off the most severe strains of disease, it can reduce monstrous four day flus down to inconvenient twenty hour flus. Go me.