Sick sick sick

Sick sick sick. How would I know I was back in McMurdo if I didn’t get sick in the first couple weeks? Seriously. I didn’t get sick right before I left when everyone else was getting sick. I didn’t get sick on any of the flights. But I am in McMurdo for 10 whole days and I get sick. Someone was saying it’s the waste barn, that it causes people to get sick…and while it’s not a crazy theory that handling other people’s garbage would be a germy endeavor I am pretty sure it’s just McMurdo in general that makes people sick. I haven’t been sitting in the computer kiosk more then 5 minutes and already I have seen 3 people cough into their hands and then proceed to continue typing. What is wrong with these people? Did they never watch Sesame Street growing up? Did their mother’s never teach them how not to infect other kids with their germs? Everybody knows you cough/sneeze into the inside of your freaking elbow! If they really wanted to keep people from getting sick around here they would skip the flu shots and invest in some bandwidth so we could all have wi-fi so we weren’t all using the same germified keyboards. And then they have the gall not to offer any cold medicine in the store other than Nyquil, which means if I want something that won’t drug me into a stupor I have to go to medical…and I know better then to do that because last season I went in to get some cough drops and ended up with a blood test and a chest x-ray (both of which came out fine) and they almost forgot to give me the cough drops. Okay, perhaps that’s enough of a rant. I just really hate being sick here even more then I hate being sick in general, you can’t get decent cold medicine, it’s hard to get the movies you want to watch, and you can’t get sick people food (chicken soup, oranges, lemon water and honey, etc.)….and this really really isn’t fair! I take my vitamins, I wash my hands, I go to bed early every night, I don’t drink, I don’t smoke…what the hell? Why me?

Laying in bed most of the day, being under the weather and all, has led to an interesting discovery: there is a tiny corner of the window in me and Jean’s room that the curtain doesn’t block and when the sun is in just the right place it creates a little camera obscura. So in the morning and in the evening there are tiny, well articulated, little shadow people walking upside down across our wall…there are vehicles too but they aren’t nearly as distinct…it’s pretty cool. Other then that I have been pretty much bored out of my mind and after three sick days I think I have pretty much coughed all the green goo out of my lungs, so tomorrow I’m going to go back to work. Besides, this was the worst possible week to get sick; I missed my sea ice training and I’m on call for spill team this week which means I had to pawn my pager off on a co-worker, and I was really just beginning to feel like I knew what I was doing at work. Blargh, this whole sick thing has put me in a bad mood.