Sick

The plague has come.

Everyone, in both the first and second year classes, is sick, or has been sick in the past week or so. (It seems that way at least.) I always get sick in September, but I thought that I was doing well and was going to avoid it this year...no such luck. The sniffing and sneezing and headaching and dragginess has come. To be honest I'm not comparatively THAT sick -- but I'm a really wimpy sick person, unfortunately.

It should be said that the first line of this post is an exaggeration for the sake of storytelling. I do not have the plague in any form, nor do my classmates. We have colds. If the bubonic plague were to occur in the here-and-now (North America in the 21st centrury), an explanation of how the heck it happened would be warranted, nay demanded. It would be national news. This is something that the writers of Grey's Anatomy last week should consider. Seriously. (I was watching in the med student lounge with a bunch of my classmates, and as one of them said, "Were these people on vacation in medieval England?!")

Then again, the plague is not as antiquated a disease as we tend to think. While the use of the word conjures up images of biblical persecution and 14th-century villages, it actually does still occur in the world today. Plague is most common in Madagascar and the Democratic Republic of Congo...but the United States has a few cases of plague annually, as well. There were in fact two plague deaths in New Mexico this year, in May and July, the first fatal cases of plague in the US in 12 years. There was also a case reported in Los Angeles, in April of this year. (Yes, I did in fact go and look all this up after Grey's.)

But I don't have the plague. That would definitely be random. And if I thought that I did have the plague, this would be the more likely cause.

I'm going to go drink some more tea now. And lie down. And ignore work a little more. Possibly, I'm only sick to have an excuse to do this.

~isolde

P.S. Unrelated, but it's amazing to me that Weird Al is still at it...