A few days ago, one of my kids stopped by for a visit. On his way out, he started coughing uncontrollably.<\/p>\n
\u201cHuh,\u201d the cocky lobe of my brain thought. \u201cIt\u2019s been four years since I\u2019ve been sick. I must be quite healthy.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou shouldn’t even think<\/em> that!\u201d my anxiety lobe screamed. \u201cYou\u2019ve heard of Murphy\u2019s Law, haven\u2019t you?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHa, ha\u2026\u201d my cocky lobe replied.<\/p>\n My cocky lobe has been very quiet today. I\u2019m assuming it died in the viral onslaught.<\/p>\n I\u2019m sitting here wearing my Sick Nightie\u2014a large, billowy flannel thing that I got from a friend\u2019s dead mother (it\u2019s a long story, but don\u2019t worry\u2014she wasn\u2019t wearing it when she died). I wear this nightgown whenever I am close to death, so my kids will know that they should avoid me\u2014and make their own dinner. My Sick Nightie is so big that a woman pregnant with triplets would find it roomy. I\u2019m also wearing my Winnie the Pooh housecoat. This, too, is reserved for near-death experiences, because I refuse to be found by the paramedics while wearing uncomfortable clothing.<\/p>\n I won\u2019t bore you with my symptoms. Suffice it to say when I went online to find out what was wrong with me, google said I either had: I went to bed mid-afternoon, hoping I could sleep off the worst of my symptoms. After shivering uncontrollably for several hours, I finally fell into a brief, restless sleep punctuated by dreams of falafals.<\/p>\n So here I sit, Typhoid Brenda, shunned by everyone who\u2019s still healthy. As soon as this fever dies down, I\u2019ll be making a Voodoo doll of the kid who gave this to me (you know who you are).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A few days ago, one of my kids stopped by for a visit. On his way out, he started coughing uncontrollably. \u201cHuh,\u201d the cocky lobe of my brain thought. \u201cIt\u2019s been four years since I\u2019ve been sick. I must be quite healthy.\u201d \u201cYou shouldn’t even think that!\u201d my anxiety lobe screamed. \u201cYou\u2019ve heard of Murphy\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-657","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-funny-bits"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/brendakearns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/brendakearns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/brendakearns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/brendakearns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/brendakearns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=657"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/brendakearns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":662,"href":"http:\/\/brendakearns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657\/revisions\/662"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/brendakearns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/brendakearns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=657"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/brendakearns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\na) The bubonic plague
\nb) Parvo
\nc) Ebola
\nd) Mad cow disease<\/p>\n