Once My Name Was Iron Woman

Iron Woman. That’s what my family used to call me. (Incredibly sweet and feminine nickname, I know.) I was Iron Woman because after fighting strep throat a whopping nine times in kindergarten, I never got sick again. It was as if my immune system had fought a death-struggle with any illness above the little nuisance of the common cold—and had won. When the stomach flu—or anything else—raked my house and literally up to all six of my family members fell prey to its mayhem, I’d stand tall and healthy.

“Wash your hands!” people would warn when the wind changed and sick season came around.

Oh, sure, I’d wash them, but I’d laugh inside as I did so. I wasn’t getting sick, and I knew it.

Alas for Iron Woman.

One year, the stomach flu (one illness in particular that delighted in plaguing our house year after year) apparently got fed up with my iron-like qualities. It knew my masterful white blood cells had raised me above its villainous reach, and it hated me for that. Unfortunately for poor stomach flu, there was nothing it could do about me.

Or so I thought.

After sweeping through my family with full force, the stomach flu left that year in a rage. As usual, I’d scoffed in its face, washed my hands before eating, and remained agonizingly healthy. Everything was entirely, hopelessly normal.

Such was the sob story the stomach flu tattled to its big bad brother, the flu. Yeah, you read that right. I mean the flu. No twenty-four- or seventy-two-hour vomiting mess here—think bubonic plague. Black Death. Influenza. It’s not a pretty thought.

Unfortunately for me, influenza took up the case of his poor little stomach flu brother and set out to get me. When I came home one Monday afternoon in November of my eighth grade, I began to feel odd. I imagined I was restless. In reality, I was meeting influenza while the stomach flu watched and laughed.

I remember irritably flopping my history book on the floor that day, unable to focus. My head felt hot. What do you know, I discovered that I was running a fever. Not a bad one, but a fever.

Foolish Iron Woman…it was so unusual for me to actually be sick that I was happy at first. After all, a little fever for one afternoon can be worth the pampering it comes with, if you’re in the eighth grade.

But the next morning, I was still sick. Now this was strange. In fact, I wasn’t just still sick; I was worse. To my own astonishment, I quickly sank onto the sofa in the living room and did not get back up. I didn’t eat (and for stocky little me, that was a huge deal). I could hardly think.

Rapidly, life turned into a nightmare as the flu wreaked havoc in my body. In the mornings, I would hobble out in my pajamas to the sofa to escape my dim room. Then, literally, I would languish on that couch all day long, growing weaker by the minute. Sometimes I lay limp. Sometimes I writhed. My fever skyrocketed to peak at times at over 104°. I’d eat almost nothing all day, knowing I was weakening but unable to strengthen myself, miserable in mind and in body.

Days passed. A week. Nothing got better.

By the time the week mark passed, I had pretty much made the record for the sickest ever in my family, at least among my siblings. Meanwhile, they quietly carried on their lives around me.

Healthy.

The stomach flu laughed harder.

And yet my war with influenza was far from over; a second week of couch-ridden agony stretched out before the nightmare finally began to fade. Even when those two dreadful weeks were over, though, I could hardly function.

A monstrous two weeks behind in school, I tried that third week to begin to catch up. Fail. Though at last the flu had released me from its talons, my recovery was excruciatingly slow and almost as miserable as the two-week-solid illness.

By the end of the third week, I was at last a bit more of my old self—and I do mean a bit. I was very nearly literally half the girl I once was. My body had changed from vaguely resembling a marshmallow to the spitting image of a string bean in a scant three weeks. Almost overnight, my appearance was completely different. I could almost go swimming in my jeans. Though I would go on to gain back a healthy portion of my prior weight, I would never be the same again.

The next year, when the stomach flu washed over our family, I still washed my hands. I still didn’t get sick. But I never laughed at it again.

So much for Iron Woman.