Yes, I'm a wuss...

When I woke up yesterday morning, the cold that had been on the way out the door decided to come back and fill my sinuses solid...the epidemiological equivalent of morning sex after a one-night-stand. I spent most of the day in bed. My only hope for a good result from the last week and a half of cold-relating living is that this will encourage my biographer to add the clause, "Though his health was always fragile, he still managed to ..."

And yet, at the same time, the one thing I always realize when I get sick is a) how much of a wuss I am when it comes to illness, and b) how amazing the people who actually do things with their lives while suffering from chronic illness really are. My productivity, my reading, even my ability to be pleasant, all go into the trash as quickly as the boxes of generic facial tissue I'm abusing. (Might I recommend Puffs Plus???) Perhaps, perhaps, if I were faced with more chronic illness, I'd have a moment of courage and realize that my options were to remain curled up in a sickly ball or to get going, and would then triumphantly stumble, à la Hallmark movie, out of my bed and to my desk to begin penning my life story of triumph over disease. But I doubt it. I'd spend even more time than I already do surfing the Web, skimming New Yorkers for the cartoons, and otherwise stumbling through life in a DayQuil induced haze. I'm amazed by the people who, when faced with their joints falling apart or their muscles atrophying, actually get up and do things. You're braver, and stronger, than I. It only takes a few days of filled sinuses for me to remember that.