I've always been fascinated at how the body can just turn on itself. Whether through a simple cold or a debilitating disease, the body can sometimes be its worst enemy.
Like so many other people, I'm not good at being sick. I hate spending hours on end not doing anything, just "resting". I get whiny, impatient, and melodramatic. I might as well be one of those Victorian women, swooning and throwing my hand over my forehead, falling back onto a fainting chaise.
When I lived at home with my parents, I found that being sick was easier. Built-in care takers who were there to help you recover by bringing you food and medicine. Now, when I battle a cold or the flu as an adult, I sometimes don't bother to eat. I look at the distance from my couch to the kitchen and weigh the number of steps and effort that it would require to get up, walk to the kitchen, locate something to eat, and then actually make it. The effort suddenly feels like trying to scale Mount Everest, and I find it's easier just to lay back on the couch and imagine eating. Ahhh...
Really, though, there are two things I really miss about being sick as a kid: my parents and the couch. My parents both worked, so my brother and I often ended up home alone when we were sick. But usually one or both of my parents would call during the day to check to make sure that we were okay, and often my stepdad would make a special trip home at lunch to make sure that we were still alive and to see if we needed anything. As soon as they got home from work at the end of the day, they both would immediately head toward the sick kid on the couch, placing a cool hand on my forehead and asked how we were feeling. It was comforting to know how much they cared and they worried. Even now, when my mom finds out that I'm sick, she'll send me text messages throughout the day to check in and see how I'm feeling. I'm completely spoiled by her.
When my brother or I were sick, it also meant that we got a specially made bed for us on the couch in the living room and special treatment from my parents. My mom would take a full sheet and tuck it onto the couch as if she were making an actual bed. She would then have the sick kid crawl onto the couch while holding the sheet up, then proceed to make the bed around the sicko. Tucked in between a fresh, clean sheet and piled high with a comforter or other afghans, it was a cool, snug cocoon at a time when the body was usually burning up. In addition to being able to lounge on the couch, the sick kid typically was plied with other amenities: 7-Up, orange juice, the remote control, a book in case you felt like reading. When I was in sixth grade and had the chicken pox, that couch was my best friend for days. Today when I'm sick, no one makes a couch bed for me or brings me 7-Up; I do my best imitation by wrapping myself in a quilt that my grandma made and then burrowing into my favorite spot on the couch. But it's not quite the same.
