Illness and Injury

I am now sick. I am the fourth in my apartment to fall victim to a particularly nasty cold, meaning only two of us are as yet unscathed. I hoped I would escape this one, but today I woke up to a barrage of congestion, runny nose, headache, nausea, drowsiness, fever and a sharp pain right at the point where the nasal passages intersect with the throat. I hate that.

Fortunately, I've been able to bulldoze through my classes despite how I feel, but I don't have much motivation left over for anything else. In fact, I'm typing this from my bed, with a heavy blanket, glass of juice and rapidly dwindling box of tissues.

Oh, and since most of us are either sick or slowly recovering, we decided to give visitors fair warning.

Now you're thinking but wait, doesn't the title mention injury, too? And you're right. A few days ago I slipped on the stairs to my building and scraped most of the skin off the side of one of my toes (bad day to wear sandals). For such a minor-looking injury, it bled an astounding amount and is still disproportionately painful. Many Band-Aids have been consumed.

By now I think I've solidified that this is the worst I've felt in a very, very long time. Still, I think there's something to be learned from it. I'm stubborn like that.

This cold happened to remind me of one I had last year, which stretched on so long that I actually forgot what it felt like to be in good health. The thought made me realize that when I finally recovered, I didn't think too much of it. This is probably because the path out of an illness is slow and gradual, while the way in is rather quick. As a result, you don't realize you've recovered until you look back one day and think to yourself oh look, I'm not sick anymore. Cool beans.

I'm personally frustrated with that pattern, since I believe one should enjoy the high points just as much as one hates the low points. If I hate being sick, shouldn't I celebrate being healthy? That's my point for the day: appreciate health. Look at yourself and say "Gee, I'm so glad I'm not sick right now!" because someday, when you least expect it, you might wake up with some Death-Virus like I just did. And if you aren't currently graced with the benefits of health, just keep pushing along. The world doesn't change what it demands of us just because we aren't in peak condition, so instead we have to change our approach. Take it a day at a time, and someday it'll all work out. I'm rooting for you!

Hic Manebimus Optime!

One Reason to be Glad I Got Rejected

Quite a bit of news has surfaced recently about the mumps outbreak at our dear Harvard. In truth, the outbreak began back in February, but had not been publicized previously because precautions were being taken to isolate patients and prevent spread. With over forty confirmed cases up to this point, the university seems to have been unable to contain the outbreak, which means bad things for Harvard students.

Mumps has become a fairly rare problem in the United States because it is easily preventable with a vaccine. Now you're thinking 'okay, so those students weren't vaccinated, so what?'
The problem is, they were. All of the students currently affected were immunized, as per university regulation, and yet they contracted the virus anyway. So how is that even possible?

Since Harvard students come from all over the country (and the world), these students received their vaccines from many different locations, eliminating the possibility of a bad batch of vaccines. Thus, in my estimation, the only remaining possibility is that the strain of virus in this outbreak is resistant to the vaccine.

We interrupt this post to ask a very important question: why does the biohazard symbol look so darn cool? It's literally my favorite symbol in all the world of symbols. But I digress.

Now, before we all start jumping to conclusions, we should establish what the danger level is for this virus. I'm a bit of a disease junkie myself; I love movies like Contagion, I play games like Pandemic and Plague, Inc. and I have done multiple school projects on everything from cholera to the bubonic plague, so I'm personally fascinated by the logistics of this type of outbreak.

The virus is basically non-lethal, seeing as the symptoms consist of inflammation, fever, aches and pains and headache, and nearly all patients make a full recovery. So essentially life and limb are not at stake here, but it can make for a very unpleasant few weeks.

In order to minimize the number of students enduring those unpleasant few weeks, Harvard has admonished their students to take the outbreak seriously and to 'stop infecting each other.' The virus is transmitted through saliva, mucus and respiratory fluids/vapors (so it isn't exactly an airborne pathogen, but I wouldn't let anyone breathe on me if I were them), so as a word of warning to anyone who is actually at Harvard, do try to minimize contact with any of those fluids.

Returning to the title of the post. I'm not actually glad I got rejected, and I never will be, but I may have secured a unique benefit: I wasn't at Harvard for Admitted Students Weekend (refer to previous post). Cases began in February, meaning that anyone who has stepped onto the Harvard campus since February has been at some degree of risk. Theoretically anyone visiting the school on that weekend, including me if I had been accepted, could have been infected. And seeing as the virus is not currently contained and seems to ignore immunization, undocumented cases are roaming the campus at this very moment, infecting more unlucky souls. The threat is real.

So I suppose I get to count my blessings this time, since I'm currently at home, at precisely zero risk of mumps. But that could change, if the virus is indeed unaffected by vaccines (cue dramatic music)

In all seriousness, my sympathies go out to anyone unfortunate enough to be enduring the illness, and I hope those uninfected Harvard students will take measures to keep themselves healthy. I have full faith in the university's resources and ability to handle the outbreak, and I wish them the best, but frankly I'm glad it's one thing I don't have to worry about. So I guess I sort of won? Yeah, let's go with that.

Hic Manebimus Optime.