That explains my absence for the past few days. I mainly spent my days rolled up in blankets, dressed in sweats, covered in sweat on the couch. Also, I spent an awful lot of time shoveling that white stuff that keeps falling.

This is all part of my master plan to lose some weight. As of this morning I’m 5 pounds lighter than I was on December 23rd. Go me!

So, what did I miss?

Yes, it’s a sore throat!

I guess I’ll delay my training to beat Michel Mangetout.

P.S.: I really hope this “Look what I got!” will not become a series. Sigh.

Click to embiggify. Woot.

• Motorcycle accident (does it count, I went by ambulance?).
• Torn ligaments in right ankle.
• Dislocated shoulder.
• Tendinitis of the thumb.

I am not the kind of person who spends his week-ends at the emergency, I hate going there and am most likely to “walk off” any semi-serious disease / injury instead of spending hours in that dreadful place. I am also not big on medication. I don’t cure headaches with pills, I don’t take Gravol when my tummy hurts, and so on. Once in a blue moon, I will take some Tylenol if I get a massive headache and I can’t function. Until I went to Africa, my pharmacy consisted of nothing and could’ve been carried with me at all times. You should see the amount of pills I had to take while there (okay, it was only one a day, plus another kind in case of explosive diarrhea) and I know some people have to take 4-5 a day or more. I am not saying those people should not take medication, I am saying I wouldn’t be able to do that. Shoot me now!

But lately I’ve been sick almost on a regular basis. What the Frak? It seems to me that the 2008 fever is much stronger than the 1988 fever. And it’s a very bad year for the 2008 headache. Is it me or are diseases getting nastier and nastier? The sad thing is that I know it’s me. Did I reach this point in my life where I am going to start being a sissy about every little cough I get? Will every headache, cramp, runny nose send me running to the doctor’s? I hope not. I know 36 is somewhat of a middle point in my life (hey, if I reach 72 I’ll be amazed!), but this is getting ridiculous.

I would be the worst guy to get some serious illness*.

I can clearly picture this:

Doctor: “Mister LeSombre, you have some serious illness.”

1995 Me: “Meh, I’ll walk it off.”

2008 Me: “Isn’t there some drug I can take? And can we also do something about this serious illness?”

*I was going to write “cancer”, but I chose to go with “serious illness”. It seems that talking about cancer is frowned upon nowadays. Case in point, over the week-end my Lovely Daughter had a Kinball tournament. Their school decided to name their teams after “diseases”. I know it seems weird, but this part is totally true. So the teams had names like “feverish”, “phlegm” and so on. Except my daughter’s team.

You see Caroline is on Zoé’s team, and Caroline used to have cancer. Her parents threw a big party when she went into remission. So they called their team “Cancer on fire”. The Kinball people thought that was politically incorrect, and changed the name to “Sickness on fire”. But they forgot to mention this to the kids on the team. So here we are, the good parents, sitting in the stands holding signs that read “Go Cancer”, “Cancer is great”, “Cancer on fire” “Cancer will win” and “We love Cancer”

And I realize now that spending an afternoon at kinball might have been the first sign i was sick.