Pneumonia sucks

Do you remember when you were a kid and whenever you wanted to go outside your mom would yell "Put on your jacket or you're gonna catch pneumonia!" at you from the other side of the house? I believe this made many of us correlate being cold with catching pneumonia. Seemed like a logical assessment...and complete and utter crap.

As of two weeks ago, my girlfriend has been suffering from a case of summer pneumonia. When I heard this news I was shocked, dismayed, and dare I say a little scared...and one question was going through my head...

"You mean to tell me...that my parents have been LYING to me all these years?!"

Wasps...proof that God
is a sadist...

Summer pneumonia...that's like having a bee infestation in winter. I'm not supposed to have to worry about getting stung by a bee in winter...although, I will now...Do ya see what you've done Mom?! Now I'm gonna be afraid of bees all year. There will be no rest for me...And don't even get me started on wasps...Japanese wasps are the stuff of nightmares. Like 2 to 3 times the size of our American wasps...and 10 times as pissed!

...but i digress...

What else did my parents lie to me about? Is the Easter bunny fake? Is the Santa in the mall actually just a temp in a fat suit? Did my cat not really have his neck broken by our tennis ball machine?....Oh...that last one was true?

I miss you...um...tennis cat...

...

Great job, Dad! That's the time you decide not to lie to me?! I was 11! Clearly not ready to deal with nearly decapitated pets! I could no longer use the tennis court after this for fear that more than just tennis balls would come flying at me...

...but I digress...

...again...
...What was I talking about?

reads blog title

OH! Right! My girlfriend's pneumonia.

It's actually pretty sad. Mainly because I can't take care of her since she lives a couple hours away...and that, since she has not yet told her father about me, I cannot go to her house. I do really want to just bring her flowers and make her some soup or something, though.

Luckily, I did get to help her out for a couple days. She had come to visit me right before her fever spiked. That night I road my bike to a bunch of stores and bought her whatever she needed. I also kept replacing a wet towel I had put on her head to cool her down every 20 minutes or so. And she did get better pretty quickly...but a few hours later, the fever came back.

Since then she has been at her family's house trying to get over it, but it just won't go away. I can't understand it. She's eating healthy, drinking medicine and resting alot...except for when she goes to work, of course.

Hmm...what could possibly be prolonging her sickness?

As you may have guessed, going to work whilst having pneumonia is probably not helping her condition, as rest is a very important aspect of recovery. Unfortunately, in Japan people do not like to take off work when they are sick. Everyone has the feeling that they are doing something wrong when they don't go to work...even if it is so they can stay in bed to nurse a 101 degree fever.

I don't want to catch a computer virus.
Hahaha...
...What? It's funny...

It is actually extremely common to see people wearing surgical masks to work in order to prevent themselves from making their coworkers sick...and occasionally to keep themselves from being made sick by the people that refuse to stay home and get better. I honestly had to wonder when I walked into school during flu season whether or not I had actually walked into an episode of ER by mistake.(Who am I kidding? Even those guys'd never where masks. You don't hire George Clooney or Uncle Jesse just to cover up their faces...that's the moneymaker. Goose, on the other hand...)

Students are no different. If a student can stand(and given the number of students I've seen feint...in many cases this does not matter), he/she is going to school. I would not be down with that. I used to milk my sick days for all I could...didn't matter whether I was sick or not.

In any case, she seems to be getting better...albeit more slowly than I'd prefer...and I should be able to see her again this weekend. That is, of course, if she actually gets better by then...