I could feel it coming on last night. My throat started to have that tingling feeling way in the back, my nose started to become a little sniffly, and every once in a while I would have to cough a couple times. As I somehow managed to stay up past 2am once again, I accepted the fate that was going to greet me when I woke up in a few hours: I was going to be sick.
Sure enough, at 6am this morning I awoke to a runny nose, watery eyes, annoying cough, and sore throat. Basically, I got the usual cold that always makes life less pleasant than what I would like. I got ready as the cloud of drowsiness that always comes with the type of cold I get hovered all around me. I drove to work and dove into all the fun that a Monday morning entails (lots of work). A few minutes later my boss walks in and announces exactly what I knew she was going to announce: “I’m sick.”
You see, Christie and I this summer could have pretty much written on the calendar the exact day in which the plague would hit us. It never fails. It seems every year that once we get the first couple of home football games under our belts and late September starts to creep in, the long hours of hard work and stress combined with the changing temperature outside catches up to us and punishes our bodies. It is just not in marketing either, it impacts our whole department. Other people reported the same type of symptoms this morning. Just call it the “Fall Sports Craziness Syndrome.” Once August hits we are under constant pressure to get ready for the fall sports season. We work non-stop preparing and then before we know it, it is September and the actual games and the annual events are starting and you really have no time to think about it, you just take it on headstrong. September is a brutal month for anyone who works in intercollegiate athletics. Well, this past Saturday we completed our second football game in as many weeks. The team is out of town this next Saturday. With this brief wave of fresh air comes the annual realization that we have been neglecting our basic needs like adequate sleep, a healthy diet, and social relationships. When this epiphany hits, the predictable sickness rolls right in.
I hate being sick. When I am sick it makes the most mundane tasks 10x more taxing. For whatever reason, the common cold takes a pretty heavy toll on my body. I know, call me a pussy, but it is true. My eyes get red and droopy and I tear up constantly. My nose becomes red. My throat gets so clogged up that my voice sounds like death. My shoulders hunch over. My body language just sucks. It is not fun at all.
Funny thing is, my whole life I have always gotten sick on a “schedule” so to speak. In high school I would always get extremely sick in late September. For our football schedule, we pretty much played our conference opponents in the same order each season. Thus, whenever I looked at the schedule and I saw that we would be playing Ferris (one of our rivals in the Greater Spokane League), I knew I would be sick for that week. Sure enough, I always was. Once I hit college, I always knew that once midterms came around (end of September), I would be in for it.
I have come to terms that there is really no way I can prevent myself from getting sick at these times. It is just something that is programmed into my body. I am always going to get sick at certain times during the year, now deal with that Brent! What I could do better on, however, is recovering as quickly as possible. When I am sick, especially during this time, I do take lots of medicine but that is pretty much the only method I use to take care of myself. I still work out each day when I am sick. Everyone says that I should let my body rest but I honestly feel that working out gets healthy juices flowing through my body again and I kid you not, when I am sick and I am working out, for that hour and a half it seems as if all my symptoms go away and I am just in the zone. The minute I hit the locker room, I feel like garbage again. Also, working out is a major stress reliever for me and because stress is one of the major reasons why I am sick in the first place, it is a good idea to keep fighting it the best way I know how. I know I should also probably get more sleep when I am sick, but it is hard. I just can’t sacrifice all of the stuff I do at night for a couple more hours of sleep in hopes that it will make me feel better. I also know that I should maybe take it a little easier at work while I am not feeling too hot but there is no time to do that, there is too much going on and too much work to do. Also, it is just not in my nature to miss work due to sickness. I was one of those kids who strived to have perfect attendance at school no matter what the cost. I hated to get behind. My senior year of high school, my senior year, while everyone else was skipping class, I made sure to attend every single day of class (confession: I missed ONE day because of some terrible food poisoning that I got). Of course, because I played sports year round I could not afford to miss a day of school or else I couldn’t practice but there were many days when I was sicker than a dog and should have stayed home (sorry to all the kids I got sick by being at school when I shouldn’t have been). Yes, I don’t take many excuses from my body when I am sick.
Basically, this is a very therapeutical post for me. I am recognizing that it is just that time of the year where I feel a little under the weather and that like all things, it will pass. It also provides an outlet for me to complain about being sick because everyone knows that one of the most annoying things people do is bitch about being sick. It is much better if you complain via a blog post as opposed to in person about feeling like shit, right? So here I am saying bring the sickness on!! Give me a hell for a week and then get out of my body. I promise, I won’t miss you. Stay healthy everyone! Don’t Blink.
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