Someone Else's Fault

This is the last story that involves me and some sort of ailment for a long time. I promise. I don’t look at myself as “sickly” but this has been an abnormally bad year, so far. This month, I found myself with the good old fashioned flu.

Whenever I get sick, my first reaction is that it must be my allergies. Since I believe that I hardly ever do get sick, it must be something out of my control. This time, it could not be denied, the congestion, the body aches, lack of appetite, etc., I was sick.

If I can’t convince myself that I am sick from just having a bad allergy attack, I have to ask myself, “Then whose fault was it?”

I mean really. I work in an office that includes me and the dog so I rarely have contact with sick people. I even make the UPS guy drop my boxes on the porch. Even after I touch the possible carrier of germs, (the box, not the UPS guy) I go lather up with Purell!

I wash my hands all day long. I wash when I go out I wash when I come in. I use Purell when go into a store or restaurant and when I come out. In fact, I think I am going to go wash my hands right now…ahh...that’s better.

Suspect Number One

So whose fault is it, since it can’t be mine? After careful consideration I submit to you my number one suspect; my wife Mary. Mary works in an office full of people, people under pressure. People that have so much to do, they have to work…even when they are sick. So they go to work sick, transfer their germs to Mary and she comes home to give them to “Mr. Sterile” (don’t read in to that, I only mean “sterile” from the germ aspect).

Those germs jump on me like losing gamblers jump on the ninety-nine cent buffet in Reno. It’s Chow Time!

Those of you who know my lovely wife would say – “No, never, not sweet Mary” but yes, I am afraid it’s true. Because, if it’s not her – then it’s got to be her family.

Her Mom, aunt and sister come over regularly for dinner and other assorted meals. They were just here for Easter Bunch a week or two ago, possibly bring me the latest trend in germs. You tell me if I’m off base.

Suspect Number Two

Mary’s sister works full time at a school, and get this, as the school “attendance” person. Kids who are sick are sent to her office to wait there for parents to pick them up. It’s here that these children sneeze across the room, cough without covering their mouth, and routinely vomit in the trash can. This happens every day! Every day I sit down in my kitchen to eat my lunch, across town, in my sister-in-laws office, some kid is losing theirs. I don’t know how often she is sick, but she could be like the monkey in “Outbreak” and just be the germ host. Just waiting to deliver them bacteri to some unsuspecting nice guy.

Suspect Number Three

Poppycock, you say? You don’t think she’s guilty of bringing nasty germs to my house? How about her daughter? Sophia, who is four years old and she goes to pre-school! Does that ring the bell of guilt? Pre-School, the place where parents who can’t miss work, (maybe they work with Mary), so pre-school is the place where these people leave their sick kids! Pre-schools are a microorganism’s summer vacation. There are more germs whirlpooling around those kids in a pre-school than are ever found at the local hospital. A pre-school is truly virus metropolis. Not only are there sick kids coughing on each other but there’s no Purell! Sophia mingles with the offenders and just like her mother, she plays host to every influenza microbe on the planet. "Let's go to Uncle Terry's house."

Suspect Number Four

Not little Sophia, you say? Lets take a look at Mary’s aunt Billie. Aunt Billie works at a library! Think of the germs that live in library. A nice, warm place to propagate those little viruses. Think about it. Those books go out to millions of people. Those people sit at home nursing a bad cold and what do they do? They curl up with a nice book from the LIBRARY! How many times have you seen someone stop their cough by holding a book in front of them? Books are also used to stop sneezes and other unsightly projections from the offending sick person. This happens all the time. And what do they care, it’s not their book; they’ll just bring it back to the library!

So there you have it, four people that are more responsible for me being sick, than me.

As a final note, I wanted to tell you a cautionary tale about how not to treat a head cold.

The other day in a somewhat desperate attempt to get well faster, my aching head was congested and I thought about the value of steam in the shower. I thought that steam in a shower would help relieve my head cold symptoms and put me on the road to recovery. As I was taking a hot shower, I surmised that I needed something more. I stepped out of the shower and grabbed a bottle of eucalyptus oil we had on a shelf. The directions said: “use liberally”. That’s it, just use liberally. So I did. I slathered it on my chest, arms – under my nose – thinking I would breathe in the hot steaming scent of rejuvenating eucalyptus. It worked sort of, but I think the bottle was somewhat old and much of the pungent scent had left long ago. What was left, however, was the oil. You may not know this, but if you but oil on your body while in a wet shower and it should happen to get on your feet – you could be in some serious trouble.

I began to glide without really trying. Sliding like I was on a conveyer belt, backwards as I stood still in the shower. It was kind of fun at first, thinking I was Michael Jackson doing the moon walk when it hit me. I thought about the glass doors and how they would shatter, should my feet would come out from under me at any moment. This was a little scary. I thought about quick movements and what a bad idea they would be.

I slowly, very slowly, turned to face the shower door, I was still constantly moving back and forth in the shower. When I glided end of the enclosure, I ever so easily I slid open the door. When I came back to that end of the shower again, I grabbed the door crossbar over head, (that I now know can hold my weight) and lifted myself safely onto the carpet.

It took longer than usual to dry off, what with all the oil everywhere, but I learned a valuable lesson. Bath Oil is named that way for a reason.

Ankles

Maybe it’s bad luck. Maybe it’s age. As I near the “big five-oh”, I found myself in the doctor’s office, once again. January was Shingles; February was my foot injury (when I was chased down like an escaped prisoner by that kid and his Pug) For March I decided to keep with the foot problems and injured my other foot; but I didn’t even know it.

As I was golfing one afternoon a couple of weeks ago, I noticed that I started to limp. This was strange since I didn’t notice the pain first, I just started limping first. This was so gradual, but by the end of the round I was looking like Grandpa McCoy from old time television. It could have been the floppy hat or the piece of straw I was chewing on – but the limp made me look just like the real McCoy. At the time, I was kind of playing golf like him, too.

I figured I must have stepped on something wrong or mildly twisted my ankle. The next day I got up and it was much sorer. I stretched it out, used a little ice and could walk once again, after work I went down to the nursery and picked up some needed garden supplies. Dragging potting soil and mulch around made my hobble become more severe as the day wore on. The next day it kind of hurt when I got up, so little more stretching and ice - I could move it yet again. Late that afternoon was spent organizing year-end files under the house, hauling boxes in an out. Friday, when I woke up, I couldn’t put any weight on my foot.

Ice and stretching didn’t work this time, I was stuck. I didn’t want to call Mary home from work to take me to the doctor’s office. She told me to go the day before when I could walk and I just knew I would have heard the dreaded “I told you so”.

So I army-crawled into the living room and found a thick dowel I had left over from a recent closet remodel. I pulled myself upright and proceeded to make my way around the house. Getting in and out of the shower was quite eventful as I had to do a pull up on the shower door railing to get in and out, wondering the whole time if it could support my weight. Every time I went anywhere in the house, Tucker thought I was playing some new game and tried to bite the end of the make shift cane. It’s hard enough to hop on one foot using a stick instead of crutch but when you attach a Beagle at the end of it – that makes it much more challenging.

Hours later I had made it to the doctor’s office on little baby steps and a hop while I leaned on the dowel for support. It literally took me about half hour to go fifty yards up that street. The doctor told me that I had Achilles Tendentious. It sounds like a condition but it was essentially an injury I incurred on the golf course and it worsened by working in the yard and going up and down stairs under the house.

Mary was none too happy about leaving work early that Friday afternoon to pick up crutches for me, but when I told her about me shambling up the street to the doctor’s office with my chewed up stick, I think, just for a moment, she felt sorry for me.