So came home Friday afternoon, having felt fine for most of the day. Sat down on the couch thinking lets just spend a few minutes here. Then it hit me. The sudden chills, shakes, the uncontrollable rigors, I scrambled to get warm socks, and a sweater, but became dizzy, light headed and dropped to the floor. Picked my self up and hobbled to the bed, where I then proceeded to spend the next 3 days. The fevers of 103 F alternating with the sharp drops of temperature to ice-cold  hands and feet, with  beads  of sweat rolling off my shiny forehead. Changing clothes  from being drenched in them from the fevers and chills, came with increasing frequency. Oh darn ( with a lot more expletives) this is going to ruin my weekend I thought. Tylenol every 4 hours chased down with the Advil every 4 hours helped me from the transient hallucinations or rather the illusions that the room was expanding and contracting at the same time. Then started the incessant coughing. Knife pick through the back was preferable, accompanied only by the feeling like your hollow chest was made of glass, and some maniacal creature was tapping away at it with a metallic hammer. Just shatter it and be done with it, I begged. Enough gloom and doom, you have all been here, and done that, and lived. Granted I had not taken a sick day in years or been this sick in a long time, but no one is immune to the flu like illness, so I slithered through the next few days till I was sick of being sick and so decided to get better. Does the infection just decide to leave your body or do you decide that enough is enough infection and sickness begone?

So often we know that it is mind over matter, well if you don’t  mind it doesn’t matter, probably what the sickness  feels too, as it happily  inhabits your body. Thoughts are the most powerful things in the universe. Thoughts, lead to words, which lead to action or deeds. The trilogy of creation. So my next thought was that I am going to heal myself. So 2 and half days later of self pity, being an invalid and being waited hand and foot by my lovely attentive wife ( who was juggling our 17 month old and keeping the house in order at the same time) and by parents who miraculously just at the right time arrived to lend a double pair of helping hands, I said enough is enough. I willfully thought to my self that ” I am going to be healed and goto work tomorrow in good condition and get out of bed. ” I then spoke it aloud. Then I walked over to the shower got in and blasted myself with warm water. Now I am not going into details of my showering or bathing habits, but will leave you with the idea that I took the loofa lathered it up with soap and scrubbed and scrubbed. I envisioned that through all the pores of my body I was ejecting out the sickness, the infection, evicting it from its temporary vacation home. As I scrubbed, rubbed, I said aloud “sickness you are leaving me good bye and kindly don’t come back.”  Again thought, word and deed.  On completing this endeavor, I got dry and dressed and proceeded to eat and drink. Focussing my thoughts now on getting back on schedule with chores or things to do, I made my list. The body was too weak to do anything much but the thoughts were enough to be distracting from bed ridden  illness to wholesomeness and good health. I then thanked the life and the universe for giving me this opportunity of  being sick, as had it not happened how do you appreciate or fathom what is good health. For everything there is an opposite. Left and right, up and down, good and bad, love and fear. Without knowing the other how will you ever conceive of the other option.

It is quite the picture of illness possessing an individual. The patient lying in bed, with drawn up blankets, the pajamas, the socks, and wrapped in the old woolen sweater. The curtains closed. At the bed table, a semi functioning thermometer , a potpourri of bottles including Vicks vapor rub, bottle of analgesics, a glass of water, and a heralding box of tissues. Perhaps a vapor mist blower if you are lucky. The patient with swollen eyes and the red nose from  constant blowing, would make even Rudolf the reindeer jealous. The apathetic spaced out glazed appearance is the vision that comes to my mind when I hear any one being sick. And so my thought of this image, made it so. Looking around me I was exactly that picture. So determined to change this stereotype I moved all the accessories of illness, sanitized the table, dusted off the blankets and folded them away ( to be washed separately). I adorned fresh clean clothes, and then monitored my inner outlook. Low and behold I was feeling better. Not strong enough to do laundry and clean the house, but better. My mind was clearer, the fog was dissipating, and I actually genuinely felt good health and strength returning back to the body.

The moment the fall season starts coming in, with the promise of bad winter by the farmers’ almanacs  every pharmacy and health institution commences the proclamation that “flu vaccine are now available.” Then starts the mass consumption of Vit C, zinc, echinacea and vast array of herbal supplements. Everyone has the answer how to fend off the cold or the flu, including the CDC with their gamble of the flu shot hoping and praying they got the strain rightly picked this year. Then there is the rumors of friends and coworkers falling sick, with similar  images as described earlier springing to mind. The thoughts of ” I hope I don’t fall sick too” running through our subconscious ALL the time. In a group in conversation it pops out too, ” Hope I don’t get what he got, that was nasty, he was in bed for a week !” Then you try extra hard to use hand sanitizers, keep cleaning your desk at work, trying to “stay away” from anyone with a sniffle  all this while forgetting that elevator buttons and door handles and public phones everywhere are your more likely source of spread of infection. The more you are running away from the ill health the more you are in fact embracing it. Perchance you do get the slightest of  colds, the thoughts are immediately towards I am going to be really sick and it will probably last longer than Fred’s cold, or Lucy’s flu. And then it begins Are you being fair in giving yourself a fighting chance at all for your immune system to mount any response? By all these interactions, it starts thoughts, words, and deeds, and the sickness meets you and joins the party and becomes the unwanted squatter, still you decide ” sickness begone.”

Keeping your thoughts good and clean, pure and simple can be your best deterrent and your best antiseptic. High frequency vibrations lead to higher energies leading to higher thoughts, words and boosting actions.  Your thoughts are the creative force of the universe,bringing forth everything you want,  hope, dream or desire into existence. Why would you think it can do anything less than the best for you, its creator.

Perhaps marketing a “thought sanitizer ” instead of the fragrant  hand sanitizers would be more valuable in keeping us healthy. Enjoy being germ free !!