I’m sick. I usually don’t get sick, but I’ve finally succumbed. This is the sixth day, and I feel maybe I have one or two days left. Whenever I get sick, or see someone that is sick, it reminds me of a physiology class I took as part of my massage school curriculum. That class was one of my most favorites, and this includes four years of “real” college (If you consider a BFA a real degree…I personally don’t). The class was taught by a EMT/firefighter that barely graduated high school. He was pasty, looked like a hillbilly and ate nothing but pizza and hot dogs. But when that guy talked about physiology, he was a genius. It made me want to be an EMT. I still want to be an EMT. But, it’s a hard job with not great pay and a huge amount of stress. Right now is not the right time. But, maybe when we’re done traveling and live in some small town in Northern California or a place in Costa Rica or Guam I will.

On to viruses…if you want to know about them. Viruses last about seven days because of the process your body goes through to fight it. First, you get sick. Your brain says, “hey, I’m sick!” and sends a message to your thymus to produce some T cells (fighting cells). The thymus doesn’t know which ones are the best for the job and sends out a bunch of different ones. They go out and do battle. After engaging the enemy, they come back to the thymus. The thymus then knows which ones were the best fighters. The thymus asks the brain what to do. The brain has the thymus configure some effective fighters and then sends T cell troupes out again. Now they fight the full scale war, and unless your immune system is compromised in some way, probably win. This process takes about a week.

The thymus is a gland located under your sternum. When you see King Kong beating on his chest, that’s the gland he’s hitting. When you’re sick, banging on your chest (you don’t have to do it King Kong style) is supposed to loosen any mucous and stimulate the thymus.

Obviously I’m paraphrasing, and possibly not giving you totally correct information. Since I have a sore throat and a stuffy nose and am pretty comfortable here on the couch with me tea, I wasn’t going to root around in the box where I know where my physiology notebook is to make sure.

I guess my plan of coming back from San Diego and being a tornado of cleaning, packing and organizing so we could list the house before we left for Chicago was just a pipe dream . We did meet with a realtor yesterday and have a meeting with another today and tomorrow (along with a carpet cleaning). It was a little shocking to find out that with realtors fees and closing costs, we’re expecting about a $17,000 bill. We’re looking into alternative selling methods or trying to find a realtor that will be a little more flexible on commission. Hopefully, these next two will have a better scenario, because going with a realtor will be the easiest way.