Being Thankful and Being Sick

Three weeks ago marked an unusual event in my life: illness. I came down with something Sunday evening. Monday, I went to school and taught, bleary-eyed, the only thought on my mind was my bed. A fever started taking me over. By four o'clock, I had called off for the next day, and by six o'clock, I was calling friends to take me to the hospital. I had a fever of 102, and I couldn't think straight. I was fixating on a message I had sent to a friend the night before.

The rest of the week passed in and out of fever. I taught Wednesday through Friday, each day doing just a bit more. I haven't been sick like this since I was a child. It was strange. I forgot what it was like to take my temperature intermittently; to drink hot tea in tiny sips, then feel too tired to finish; to stay in bed, to have a box of tissues on hand; to take medication on the hour because without it, it feels as though Sousa is marching a band on my optic nerve.

A week of being sick. What have I learned? The summary came in a sermon at church that Sunday: thankfulness is a habit. As I lay in the throes of fever, wishing for water, and actually unable to orient my head and feet in order to get it, I was giving thanks to God for indoor plumbing, for daylight, for a job that could do without me in times of distress, for people all around me, for friends and family I could call, for a phone, for my hair (I recall this prayer: "God, thank you that I'm not going through chemo right now. That would be way worse."), for youth, for a million things. In the sermon, Brock was talking about Paul and Silas singing to God in their chains: their joints were probably stretched beyond the limit and swelling painfully; they were probably covered in their own dirt; they were probably bloody, thirsty, hungry, and feverish. But they prayed and sang hymns to God. You don't just live that kind of gratitude overnight. You have to practice, one trial at a time. Thank you, God, for who you are, in my sickness and in my health.

For a while after being sick, I was way more compassionate to the students who asked to be excused from school for feeling ill. In China, attendance is not a big deal. If you are present for your tests (which occur frequently and have huge bearings on your future), if you make good grades, your parents will certainly allow you a day to rest. Shoot, a day every other week to rest. No problem. But in the United States? Well, we call that truancy, kids. The real problem is that I don't know when a person is "actually" sick. Some tell-tale signs that they're not sick, however, include the following:

• no fever
• no diarrhea
• no throwing up
• no headache
• no blood
• no protruding bones
• no tears
• no cough
• student tells you he has a headache, then coughs... to make the headache more convincing
• student limps up the stairs after telling you he has a headache... to make the headache more convincing
• student refuses medicine
• student refuses to go to the doctor
• after telling the student that he will miss free time after school, he gets better
• student walks to breakfast, jokes with friends, walks back to the dorm, then limps to the office to complain of severe back pain
• student has a big test or paper due that day
• student was up all night playing video games