Verbalism Personified

Dropping like Flies

This is the season for falling ill. In fact it has becomes the norm to see colleagues around you coughing and wheezing in multiples of ten. Siva would know, as he has so plainfully, or rather painfully offered.

However, life wasn't 'dis-ease' free when I was growing up. Like clockwork, I would run high fevers and cold chills for two or three weeks at the end of every Primary school semester. Call it the post-exam blues if you will. No amount of care, restrain or refrain could halt what my body was basically handing to me in a sweat shirt. And though there may have been a thousand things that the doctors or my parents could have done, there was just too much youth in me to have cared.

And as certain as the school bell ringing, I would dump everything after the last exam and head down to the basket ball court just below my block. As many of my then school-mates were living in the nearby blocks, a congregation of like-minded brats was the order of the week. Running, playing, much physical exersion, perhaps too much and too little water, I would wake with a splitting headache and high fever the next morning.

Things were not much better even after we had moved to our second house. I would wake in the mornings to sneezes and runny noses. Tracks of forest were laid waste churning out the boxes of tissues saddled in mopping up the flood. I would succuum to flu and mild fever three or four times a year. No amount of vitamin pill-popping, exercise, bountiful sleep or balanced dieting could stop it. Our family doctor simply concluded that I needed a change of climate. And this was when everything turned around.

Living in Melbourne, I enjoyed next to perfect health for almost one and a half decades. The flu and hay fever seasons came and went. My friends, who were ravaged and savaged, would drop like flies all around me. Even after flu jabs and pills, they would cringe, grimace and look on painfully when I drew deep breadths through my nose. I wondered what it would be like were I to step foot back in Singapore again.

Well, nothing much happened really. And it seemed that my body had learned to cope. Half expecting myself to fall sick again, I was surprised that my morning hang-overs never appeared. Sometimes however, I would feel the effects of an infection coming. Though infrequent, treating myself to bountiful sleep and the constant reinforcement of vitamins would be sufficient. I have even employed running as a means of "out-running" the flu.

So I think that a change in climate would be good for Siva too. When I'm home and settled, him and his partner are welcome to come and see the sights for a while.

And with Mr. Bats pottering around the medication, he'll agree that life can be easier. Just how he gets in there between the bottles of cream and racks of pills is something else. The cats can come along for the ride.

posted by Teutoburg @ 1:09 AM