Yep. That’s right.  During a Sunday visit to the Urgent Care, after sticking a Q-tip up my nose and swabbing what I’m certain was my frontal lobe, the doctor came back to me a few minutes later and said, “You’ve tested positive for the Type A influenza.”

Well, naturally. I’ve never gotten a B or C in my life! I’m an overachiever from way back. So it only made sense that if I was going to get the flu for the first time in years, it would be the Type A – you know, the animal one. The one from which pandemics are born. The one that is most likely, according to the doctor, the swine flu.  

Now I have been dreading this flu since they started talking about it earlier this year. Mostly because both my kid and I have underlying health issues that include asthma. And, as all the overblown news stories meant to scare the crap out of us to get ratings have repeatedly heralded, the swine flu is deadly to asthmatics!

Hence my obsession with antibacterial wipes and gels. Poor Julia can’t open her snack or lunch without three or four of those little wipes jumping out at her. This despite having had the first of her two H1N1 vaccines. And don’t think I’ve given up on my idea of a wipes holster just because I don’t own a sewing machine. My doodles of the protoypes rival any of Leonardo’s flying machines.

I don’t get it. How could this have happened?! My use of antibacterials was so obessesive that I’ve have turned my hands into a topographical map of the San Andreas Fault.  I was soooo careful to use them whenever I was out in public. I did what Dr. Oz said. I gargled with warm salt water and irrigated my sinuses with the Neti Pot every day. And still…I got it. I couldn’t understand why.

And then, it occured to me… you’re only as safe as your family members. And Randy the perfekt husband … not so paranoid careful as me.  I mean, I don’t remember seeing him running around with a travel size bottle of Purelle at the ready any time he touched a public door handle. Let’s just say that I suspect my flu came in the form of a Trojan Horse… disguised as my husband, himself a former USC Trojan.  Because we both got the flu on the same night… Saturday night. Which, naturally, was our first date night in months. But the cruel irony of that is for another post.

So as I shuddered from chills under piles of blankets and Randy made his sacrifices to the porcelain gods, I began to realize that while I was wiping down that shopping cart, I should instead have been wiping down my husband.

Oh well. Whattaya gonna do? Me. I’m a Monty Python fan so I think I’ll follow their lead and look on the bright side … Julia’s fine. I’ve discovered the miracle that is Tamilfu AND I’ve lost that four pounds I gained at Thanksgiving.

Life is good.

Now if you’ll excuse me….I need to puke.

DISCLAIMER: To all you USC Trojans out there who are taking offense… I AM NOT saying that a Trojan would deliberately carry the flu.  As reader Carole pointed out, if that were the case Randy wouldn’t be sick.