In sickness and in health

When it came to maintaining good health, I always considered myself invulnerable. Discussions of diseases and prevention would always be in tones of high conceit interlaced with unflagging self-confidence. Yes, I was proud of my body’s uncanny ability to avoid disease.
However, it was both with much agitation and secret complacency that I found myself at the receiving end of viral fever.
Agitated because I lost three precious days I could have spent shopping, visiting relatives, going out with friends, watching movies. What else? GO TO OFFICE.
Yes it was the season for sickness. Everywhere people were falling prey to Malaria, Dengue, and Viral, not to forget big bro swine flu.
Still, I should have been the last person to be struck by the disease. I hardly eat from out. In fact, I eat decently healthy and spend 10 precious minutes everyday tolerating the daily ablutions.
Then again, I was not displeased with the turn of events. To speak the truth, the superciliousness over my cherubic health was just a façade to hide my body’s inability to contract anything remotely debilitating. It was not without some envy that I looked upon the invalids who could just loll about at home reading a book, and be tended to. I couldn’t even remember the last time I had fallen sick.
What’s more, I looked at disease as a wonderful way of losing weight. This is one time when even the best of foods refuse to arouse your palate. All the disdain and frustration reserved for the incorrigible world is suddenly directed at food. Food that once would have your tongue sodden with saliva suddenly is just a ritual to be borne every day.
Feeling smug, I prepared to attach myself to the invalid bed for three whole days.

Unfortunately, I could never be the perfect patient. Sickness, somehow, seemed to work the reverse in my case. It just made me hungry and hungrier by the day. Apparently, it was the antibiotics working its wonders on my supposedly fragile body.
To add to that, the excruciating pain in my head and the sore, dry throat that made every morsel of food an effort to swallow were not the best of feelings in the world. And I didn’t even lose any weight!
Finally, after three days of playing the supposed invalid, coughing up abundant phlegm and dripping slimy mucus all over I realised falling sick was after all not all that cool.
So, the next time I hear of viruses, infections and ailments, I will be looking up at the heavens, and joining hands in servile poise, will importunate the stars to spare my body the favour.