Figuring out how diseases spread is a task that often requires a great deal of investigation. As one of the non-work related jokes, I have become known by one of my coworkers as ‘patient zero’ over the past couple of weeks because I got sick and then proceeded to spread the sickness that I got (from somewhere) to my coworkers in an easily recognizable pattern with a couple of days of delay and the same general suite of symptoms, including a couple of days where we all felt pretty dreadful, another few days where our bodies became phlegm-producing factories, and about a week of coughing after that. Being sick is no fun at all; being responsible for making one’s office sick is also not fun, even if it is said teasingly.

The fact that the disease I spread was not a terrible one made it at least possible to joke about. However, not all such matters can be laughed off so easily. To give but one example of this, patient zero in the AIDS crisis in North America was apparently a promiscuous bisexual who had acquired the disease somehow in Africa along his travels and then spread it to many others. It is possible to laugh off getting a cold or flu that lasts for about a week and causes no lasting harm; it is not possible to laugh off getting AIDS, at least not without having an inhumanly cruel sense of humor. Part of the ability to joke about one’s health depends on the matter of perspective. It may be necessary to joke about one’s own health if it is serious, not least to keep what remains of one’s life from being too grim and unpleasant, but it is a rude thing to joke about other people and to take their concerns lightly.

This is not the first time I have wondered about being a vector for the spread of disease. I have traveled often, and given my taste for odd and quirky locations to visit, as well as the fact that I have serious and longstanding concerns about my sensitivity to health problems, I have often worried that I would be the sort of person who could esaily pass germs from one area to another. For example, one time I had a particularly ill-fated trip to Santiago, Chile, during the Spring Holy Days in 2009, and every day of that trip I was unable to sleep and had problems with nosebleeds thanks to the air. Of course, what I found as well, and have verified since then, is that my health is particularly delicate when stress is concerned. I may face occasional health problems under normal circumstances, but extreme amounts of stress and pressure tend to sink my health pretty rapidly, making sleep impossible and making me susceptible to serious illness.

Not surprisingly, therefore, I got seriously ill on my most recent trip to South America for the Feast of Tabernacles in 2009. Seemingly half of the people there got some kind of dreadful flu bug that made me extremely thirsty, feeling cold for days, wrapped up in layers drinking water nearly constantly, unable to move very much, and yet still keeping busy singing and playing the viola and translating, even serving as a go-between to help two people court each other with no mutual understanding of each other’s languages, because I am crazy that way. By the time I got back to the United States after some flight drama that took some time to solve, I was exhausted and spent. I also worried that I was patient zero with whatever strain of flu I had acquired down in South America.

In looking back on the various illnesses of my life, I suppose I have had the good fortunate to get sick in rather picturesque ways. For example, my allergy to poison ivy nearly swelled my eye shut with pus and nearly led to my early demise at the age of 12. My allergy to mangoes has managed to send my heart racing at 150 beats per minute and make me look like death slightly warmed over on at least a couple of occasions. If I have not been fortunate in some areas of my life, my health has provided a great deal of amusement, as well as reflection on the ways in which our physical health is closely related to mental and emotional health (which, in my life, has seldom been welcome news). Hopefully, in the future, spreading diseases to others becomes less of a concern or issue. Perhaps I have been fortunate enough so far to keep my health and good spirits relatively intact.