A Diatribe on Sickness or the Lack thereof

A business partner of mine used to always comment that I was always getting sick. I would indignantly respond that I never got sick. He then would reply that I had a cold then so I was sick. But, I ask you, is a cold really being sick. I did go through a few years where it seemed I'd get a cold or two every year. Those colds were certainly doozies. But, I don't think I ever missed a day of work while being "sick." So, I personally believe that being sick means you can't go to work. Sick means that you're pretty much laid up in bed moaning and groaning and thinking that you're going to die. If you only have a sinus headache and a runny nose, that isn't sick, that's being inconvenienced.

My wife, Coppelia, is inconvenienced today. She has a cold. It is a sinus cold, which have to be the worst of the cold world. It was nice that she was able to get some extra sleep this morning because with six kids that can be a true struggle. But, the cosmos aligned and she managed to get an hour or two of extra morning sleep. Ah, morning sleep. That is the best sleep of all sleep.

Anyway, back to my record of sickness. I think in my 25 adult years that I've been sick about twice. I have to say that health has been one of my best blessings. In my patriarchal blessing it says that I would be blessed with an abundance of health. I received that blessing just before my mission to Haiti, a place where being sick isn't a possibility, but an inevitability. That blessing would prove a miracle to me. I took a bottle of Kaopectate to Haiti (you could do that back then). I remember my first week in Haiti and the other companionship was totally sick. I mean like Malaria sick. They were downing a gallon of kaopectate and the pink stuff just to survive. I vowed then to make my single bottle of K last my entire mission.

Now, here my blog gets a bit disgusting, but life is a bit disgusting at times. On my mission, we had a term for a solid stool. We called them "Statesiders" with the name coming from concept that if you were in the United States that you might expect something solid. But, in Haiti, having a statesider was a minor miracle to the point that if you had a real good statesider you would proudly declare the event to the entire house. I know, elders will be elders. In any case, having the trots wasn't an occasional thing, it was the thing. You just had to learn to deal with it. In the US, if you had those conditions, you'd probably say that you were sick, but I learned that having the hersey squirts wasn't being sick, it was simply an inconvenience.

Of course, eventually, you would eat or breath something and your stomach would begin to suffer. However, I learned eventually that having a tummy ache wasn't that sick, it was just not feeling great. So what if you tossed your cookies every now and then, you couldn't just stop preaching the gospel. If you missed an appointment in Haiti, the individual was really hurt so you tried very hard to never miss one (funny, how it didn't work the other way around). So, on my mission, I went month after month looking at that bottle of K. The contents went down every month as I would sip it from time to time when I was feeling very inconvenienced. I remember one time when my inconvenience was very difficult. Our home, which served as our chapel and had four Elders living there, was filled with Malaria. I was the only one without Malaria. We had no phone in our home and there were only four phones in the entire region of 100,000 people. So, I walked by myself (an odd experience) to call in the troops (aka, the Zone Leaders) to come and save us and take the truly "sick" to the hospital. Apparently, my blessing hadn't provided relief.

On my first attempt, I couldn't get through. When I got back to our home, I found our neighbors doing some sort of voodoo ritual to try and save my comrades. It was a ridiculous situation and I found myself starting to feel real sick. Well, I kicked out the voodooists, "thanking" them for their efforts. I then re-read my patriarchal blessing as I felt my temperature rise to amazing heights while my companion and the other two Elders just wallowed wishing for a release from their pain. I remember praying that I wouldn't need to finish of my bottle of K, or worse yet, go to the hospital with Malaria, which was about a 10 day ordeal. I remember after the prayer that I should go take a shower, which was a cold shower as that is all we had. I did so and then found myself back at the phone center in town (with clothes) and successfully making contact with the Zone Leaders who were on their way to save the day. I actually managed to escape Haiti without ever being "sick." I had a lot of inconvenience, but not sick where you spend the day in a hospital with a needle in your arm and taking lots of odd medications.

I can truly say that I feel blessed with the health that I've enjoyed my entire life. I've gone to the Doctor a few times in my life, but I think I'm on the lower side of the bell curve of sickness. I take about 20 advil a year, which is pretty good I think. In fact, come to think of it, I must have gone through most of the colds of the world, because I don't think I've had a doozy in quite a while. Watch, I'll probably get one next week and think my head is going to explode. Oh well, at least I left that bottle of K with a couple of sips left before leaving Haiti. As for my business partner, may he rest in peace. He got sick a lot. I miss him a lot this time of the year.