Welcome to the Germadome, by Mick Shaffer

First of all, my annoyingly painful bacterial infection should be called “strip throat,” not strep throat. It’s like “lip-singing” or “Old-timer’s” disease, mistaken terms that actually make more sense than the correct lip-synching and Alzheimer’s. I contend these similar-sounding phrases exist solely to separate the educated from the dullards (I vacation in both camps). But, back to my throat. I swear it’s “stripped.” The inner walls of my esophagus feel like they’ve been peeled back to reveal nothing but bare vocal chords, epiglottis tissue and a little bit of corn left over from supper. And taking in anything from liquids to solids to a little bit of corn feels like I’ve elected to deep throat a Saguaro Cactus. Swallowing is not only a chore I now plan for; it’s also feared. Plus, it takes about six seconds to complete and produces a facial expression suggesting I was violated by a plunger. See what I mean? Totally “stripped.” Anyway, that’s a “mute” point…

What is relevant here is that I get sick. A lot. It’s not just strep throat. It’s colds, coughs, influenzas, fevers…basically, everything on the Vick’s Nyquil box. Except that I need a box that would read the “lifetime, sniffling, sneezing, coughing, aching, stuffy head, fever so you can rest medicine.”

Every January—a runny nose. When Spring arrives and the weather turns from cold to warm, on comes the raspy cough—the kind of expulsion of air that seemingly begins in your metatarsals and only gets more bellow and old-mannish the farther it moves up your body. Summer months bring with them the requisite 48-hour retch-fest. More congestion when it turns back to cold from hot. And now this damn throat that feels like I’ve taken up sword-swallowing…like a magician would or Drew Barrymore would.

Of course—as we should with most of our maladies in life—I blame my parents. They’re obviously responsible for every speeding ticket I’ve ever received and the culprits for my lack of organizational skills. And, with my father being a pharmacist, faulting him here is almost a lay-up. After all, every sniffle and sneeze I emitted as a child was met with a cocktail of apple juice and pills. I had so much medication shoved down my (now sore) throat it was like I had “Old-timer’s” or something.

Thus, I have concluded that I produce zero antibodies as an adult. I have the immune system of Arthur Ashe (Too soon?). I have nothing left to fight off any sort of bacteria or virus or extra chromosome that floats my way. Strep throat turns into 10-days worth of pain, self-pity and 1700-word columns.

Now that I think about it, there are plenty of outside sources I can blame. Like the two short people I live with. Kids are magnets for germs. Kids don’t just attract germs, they interact with them. They’re as much a part of kids’ lives as tattle telling. Have you ever been to a daycare? It’s the world’s largest Petri dish. Bacteria are supposed to be only a few, tiny micrometers in length. Well, in a daycare they’re the size of two-year-olds. I once caught a group of those unicellular delinquents reading to my child…they then jumped into his nearest orifice and delivered ear infections to the entire family.

Kids bring home more disease than a Vegas bachelor party. Just look at a kid. And don’t look at your nephews’ Christmas card photo on your fridge. It’s staged. You know how the Whopper never looks as good as it does in the picture? Neither do kids. They’re gross. Look at a real kid. Snot runs from their noses incessantly. Fingernails always have last season’s soil in them. Look at them the wrong way, and they’ll pump you so full of virus your sick days will be gone in a month. They’re the dirty needle in human form.

Shifting guilt to those who can’t defend themselves is a functional theory that I don’t soon plan to abandon. However, it can’t explain the fact that my wife rarely gets sick. And while I try my best to avoid our offspring, she actually cares for them, feeds them and knows their names. She’s around them way more. Perhaps it’s her front-line duty or her cocksure attitude that naturally comes with immune-system superiority, but when I’m sick, she’s got the compassion of a prison warden. I mean, I want to curl up in bed with the History Channel and do nothing else until I’ve got my bug kicked. That means I can’t waste recovery time with tasks such as food preparation or domicile maintenance. For some reason, she rarely signs off on that agreement.

Maybe it’s just another chapter in the “Wife Handbook” that I swear every woman reads before walking down the aisle, but it could have something to do with the kind of lifestyle she watches me enjoy prior to an ailment. Let’s just say, I don’t exactly prepare for the worst. For instance, a rundown of the week that led up to the “stripped” throat:

Monday – Knowing I had committed to doing a radio show from 6-9AM the next few mornings, I naturally went to a movie at 10:15PM with a male friend of mine (It wasn’t as homosexual as you might think…it was a lot more). Home in bed and asleep by a cool 2:30AM. There will be a theme developing here.

Tuesday – Awake time: 5AM. Stupid activity: drinking beer with buddies in the basement while watching college basketball until 11:30PM. Sleep time: 12:00AM.

Wednesday – Awake time: 5AM. Stupid activity: still not considering a nap. Sleep time: 11PM (early!).

Thursday – Awake time: 5AM. Stupid activity: climbing into a bottle of Captain Morgan’s Lime (not as homosexual as you might think…a lot more) at midnight with my wife and another couple and not climbing out until hours later. Sleep time: 5AM.

Friday – Awake time: 8AM. Stupid activity: eating gigantic portions of greasy food at a dirty IHOP. Sleep time – 11PM.

Saturday – Awake time: 9AM. Stupid activity: ignoring sore throat. Sleep time: 12AM.

Sunday – Awake time: 8AM. Stupid activity: church (seriously, I shouldn’t have rolled out of the rack for anything). Sleep time – 2…PM.

You need to realize these admissions serve as a big step in confronting my problem. Up to this point, I’ve always been reluctant to enter into conversations about what ails me. I’m always the guy denying sickness. “No, really, I feel fine,” as a lung cookie somehow escapes my mouth and implants itself in the drywall. I’m not a hypochondriac; I enjoy working. I run and workout everyday(ish); I’m physically fit. I eat right(ish). If anything, I perceive poor health as a weakness. And considering both my golf game and affinity for Steven Seagal movies, I don’t need another weakness.

Of course, any hint of “thin-skinnedness” toward an issue is blood in the water for a collection of smarmy, ruthless, sarcastic friends I seem to collect, maintain and generally despise. These unoriginal bastards know they can rile me up with pop-offs about only a couple of things: Oklahoma State athletics and getting sick. I give them plenty of fodder for the latter.

Therefore, I was less than shocked to see my inbox littered with seven Monk-E-mails making light of the (most recent) day I called in sick. You know the Monk-E-mails, right? You type in a paragraph of something you want said to somebody else. Dress up a two-dimensional monkey in an array of hats, glasses, outfits and props and then deliver the message by e-mail usually in a British accent and usually in a poorly-paced, interrupted sort of way because the technology just isn’t quite there yet to put the written word to speech. This probably became cliché on the coasts years ago but I live in Kansas so let us have our lame fun. Anyway, this was one of the cleaner Monk-E-mails.

“Good morning, Mick, this is Belinda from the front desk. We were wondering if your herpes and crabs were keeping you from working today. We want to put the news on the company internet. Let’s f*** later. Love, Belinda.”

It’s much funnier if you actually hear and see the British monkey in pearls and a blonde wig say it. I think.

But you get the picture (if you’ve made it this far). My health issues are quite far-reaching. I blame my dad. I blame my kids. I’m jealous of my wife. And I hate my friends. All because I’m sick. A lot. My weakness is affecting more than my relationship with the porcelain thrones positioned throughout my house.

So I decided to take a radical step. I’ve gone to the doctor. That’s right, I don’t usually go to the doctor. The reasons for this should be fairly evident by now: my dad’s a pharmacist and I don’t make good decisions. At the office visit, I rather embarrassingly detailed for Doc my string of illnesses. He then asked me what I had done about them. I then told him “nothing” since I hated taking pills and those paid to prescribe them. He then said I was like a leper who loved hot tubs. I then said, “good one.” So, he prescribed me a simple spray, mentioning something about “post nasal drip.” It turns out my plight is very common and I don’t have to be fated into a life of getting sick every television sweeps period.

Obviously, I’m delighted with this news. The Monk-E business has run its course. Besides, Oklahoma State is about to commence sucking at basketball so my buddies need some fresh material. Plus, I’ve been having a lot of nightmares lately so I’m thinking about blaming both my parents and kids for those now. Oh, and then there are the benefits of much less coughing and hacking and sneezing. I could easily live to the ripe old age of 51. Sick days could now be applied to their proper usage…fishing. I’d be fit as fit as a butcher’s dog. I’d be the 32-year-old version of fitness guru Jack LaLanne. In other words…normal. And for that, I could mistakenly—but more sensibly—say I’m “internally grateful.”