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Honolulu Lite Charles Memminger |
Exotic illnesses
are catching onAFTER battling fever, aches and coughing for the past week, I was pretty sure I'd come down with the first documented case of SARS in the islands.
As a semiretired world-class hypochondriac, contracting rare, sometimes fatal illnesses for me is a piece of cake -- or, in this case, a box of noodles.
My wife was sure that I had just been hit with a nasty strain of flu that has been going around. Because I work out of my home, she kindly brought home a large dose of the virus to share with the family. Not satisfied to simply contract one contagious illness, she contrived to come down with a dose of pinkeye at the same time.
Pinkeye, or conjunctivitis, is one of the most communicable diseases around. The way to make sure you don't get it is to avoid rubbing your eyes with your fingers. The hardest thing in the world to do is to not rub your eyes after someone tells you not to. Here's an example: Whatever you do, don't rub your eyes before you finish this column. Hah! You'll never make it.
Anyway, my daughter and I quarantined Mom downstairs and tossed down occasional hunks of meat and bottles of water. After several days, when her eyes weren't so pink and she wasn't coughing up lung chunks, we let her back into the family.
A few days later, I was stricken with SARS, although my wife thinks I came down with whatever she had. I was sure I had SARS because I had just had noodles from a fast-food Chinese restaurant, and everyone knows SARS comes from China. My wife pointed out that I am insane and that those particular noodles were manufactured in New Jersey, not Beijing. Picky, picky, picky.
IT TURNS OUT she was right. I don't have SARS. What I have is monkeypox. Monkeypox is currently sweeping though Wisconsin, Indiana, Illinois and, apparently, certain parts of Kaneohe.
I was surprised to discover I had come down with monkeypox, mainly because before I read about it the other day in the paper, I had never heard of it, and secondly because people usually contract monkeypox from pet prairie dogs or Gambian giant rats.
Kaneohe is relatively free of both prairie dogs and Gambian giant rats, but I did see a rather suspicious-looking mongoose by the driveway the other day.
Despite my wife's sneers and put-downs (the woman has no bedside manner), I've bravely fought this monkeypox and through fits of fever-induced delirium gained certain unique insights, like, naming this disease monkeypox is really unfair to monkeys. The fever has taken me to a high plane of consciousness from where I've considered some of life's most important questions, such as, Why do people in Wisconsin keep prairie dogs as pets, and just how giant ARE Gambian giant rats?
Time to crawl back into bed. Just remember, whatever you do, don't rub your eyes.
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Charles Memminger, winner of National Society of Newspaper Columnists awards, appears Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. E-mail cmemminger@starbulletin.com