Hooooooow is it possible that I put on a kilo and a half during the week that I was in bed with malaria? I could barely keep a meal down for four days. Today is the first time I ate anything substantial.
Hoooooooow?
Argh and argh again(!), I say with a sufficient amount of angst as I glare at the bulge that calls itself my waistline. Maybe the death daggers I’m emitting will shrink my jingly arms and my flabby thighs.
It’s great to be malaria-free, but surely there should be a payoff for a week (okay four days, whatever) of suffering.
*****
The Luganda radio stations in Kampala are translating Swine Flu as omusujja gw’embizzi. Surely there has to be another name to give the disease that is closer to reality. Omusujja gw’embizzi conjures up images of cuddly pink pigs with runny noses, red eyes, sneezing every five minutes, begging for a hot cup of lemon tea or a bowl of chicken soup and surrounded by used Kleenex tissues.
*****
Pigs in Space! I miss The Muppets.
“The continuing stoooooory of a quack that’s gone to the dogs.”
A child doctor treated me last week. The boy can’t be more than 10-years-old. Okay maybe 24, but same difference, no? When he told me to pull down my skirt so he could administer an injection, I balked. Doesn’t baring my tushy at him constitute some sort of child abuse?
What was worse was that I developed a rash all over my chest and stomach. He said he needed to see it. I said, no, let me just describe it. I need to see it, Madam Tumwi. Just lift up your blouse. No, I’m embarrassed, you’re just a child. Madam Tumwi, just lift up your blouse.
Nobody tells you to wear sexy lingerie when you are sick. It should be in the rulebook on healthy living, right after eating a balanced diet and staying away from restaurants with laminated menus.
Okay, so Doc Kid looked and probed, all the while asking, in a bemused and patronizing way, about thingys. Then he said I could put my blouse down and as he walked out he said, “By the way, you shouldn’t be embarrassed. You have a great body for a 40-year-old.”
Way to make a 33-and-seven-eighths woman feel sexy, Doc Kid.
Have a disease-free week!
