For the last three weeks I have been afflicted with one kind of health concern or the other, and I am still in the stage where I find that sort of thing sardonically humorous. First, there was a flu bug of sorts that ravaged through the office, giving me chills for a couple of days and about a week of very nasty nasal drip. After that came my gout attack (which is mercifully, it appears, on the way out, after about a week and a half or so, even if my foot is still tender), during which time I had a particularly rough bout with allergies for a few days. Now, for the last four days or so, I have had a really nasty cough, which by the sounds of it have been shared by many of the people around me as well.

Quite honestly, I’m not someone who is particularly fond of being sick [1], even if it is the source of a great deal of writing. I remember, of course, being a kid, where I would have months and months of either colds or flus or allergies more or less one after another after another. I am not sure what sort of susceptibility I have to such things, but I always considered such matters as things to be endured but never things to be enjoyed, and that remains my attitude today. I suppose if I waited for things to be perfect, I would never go about doing them at all, and so for better or worse I have acquired a well-earned reputation for being rather persistent despite the illnesses that I have to deal with from time to time.

Occasionally, though, one can find a great deal of humor about sickness. For example, today, with the sound of coughing not only coming frequently from me, but from just about everyone else around me as well (although, I must admit that I was definitely one of the worse coughers), my immediate neighbors and I decided it would be a fine time to joke about the pneumonic plague, and passing it on to various people in our lives. (I must admit that I did not have anyone that I wished to pass it to myself.) Having known people who have ended up with double pnumonia during times where I faced serious sickness as well, such things are a laughing matter only to those who are not really suffering horribly. Even at home, I got teased about bronchitis–I’ve only been coughing for a few days, let’s not get out of hand here.

Technically speaking, pneumonic plague is one of the three forms of the plague caused by Y. pestis, the other two being septicaemic plague (an infection of the blood), and the far more familiar (even legendary) bubonic plague. Naturally, if I or my coworkers really did have the plague, it would not be particularly funny except as a grim and likely fatal joke, and that sort of humor is a bit dark even by my rather dark standards. Even so, I suppose that a group of sick people who are all trying to plow their way through sickness in order to make that dollar are bound to make some sort of joke about it or another, often in as morbid a way as possible. I suppose, given a few days, this will all be forgotten by most of us, at least until the next interesting thing happens healthwise throughout the office, at least.

[1] See, for example:

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2012/08/14/sick-puppies/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2013/10/03/book-review-sick-tired/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2013/04/04/patient-zero/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2013/03/19/is-it-catching/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2011/08/01/nausea/