Winning the immunity challenge

I haven't watched that crapfest of a show "Survivor" since its first season, when it was something of a novelty. However, I remember from watching the aforementioned crapfest that the contestants were always competing in immunity challenges. Winning the stupid "immunity idol" would keep you from being voted off the island or whatever for that week. Well, I have always considered myself to have won a sort of "immunity idol," except it's the literal kind of immunity. Instead of not getting kicked out of my tribe, I get to sit around and watch my tribe get sick and bitch about it, while I am enjoying my healthy awesomeness.

Last night I got lazy and didn't post anything because I really didn't feel well. My tuna fish was doing some kind of rain dance in my stomach (which worked by the way, as it did rain today), while the room was spinning. I have never experienced the room spinning sensation while 100% sober, and I have to say that I just plain don't like it. Today, I wasn't as dizzy or nauseated, but I have just felt like whining and moping and complaining that my throat hurts.

Tonight, I feel much better. I think the beers helped. I usually feel completely better by the end of the day whenever I start to feel gross like that. Which is just as good, as I have no idea how to treat common ills like sore throats.

I can literally count on one hand (and one finger) the times in my life where I would classify myself as sick. I used to get some kind of crazy sinus infection twice a year, but I have never considered that to be "sick." Also, those gross sinus infections have stopped completely since my deviated septum was corrected, so now I walk around most days feeling like some kind of advanced superhuman. However, when I have been sick, it's been pretty bad. My five illnesses, in chronological order:

1. Measles -- Yes, I was vaccinated against the measles. Yes, I still got them. Mind you, I was vaccinated against those nasty German measles, and I ended up getting non-German measles of some sort. Seriously... Who gets measles these days? I am 27 years old, and have not found one single other person who has had the measles. I guess I am just special.

2. Scarlet Fever -- Another illness that pioneers used to get. I came down with this in first grade, mere days before my McDonald's birthday party. Needless to say, it had to be cancelled, which really pissed me off because I was sure that I was going to own all at the contest where you stack the old polystyrene Big Mac cartons. I even had these kickass Ducktales (Ducktales-- woo ooh!) treasure hunt invitations. Well, instead of stacking Big Mac cartons, I had to stay in my bedroom with the lights off so I wouldn't go blind like Laura Ingalls Wilder's sister in Little House on the Prairie. Pioneer freaking disease. Then some kid in my class (Dusty) caught my strep throat that caused my scarlet fever, and he ended up with rheumatic fever which will affect his heart for the rest of his life. Score: Me- 1, Dusty- 0.

3. Tonsillitis -- Seventh grade. I remember calling my grandma to come and get me from school, but I think she might have told me that she would get me in a couple of hours, and that in the meantime I should just put my head down. Putting my head down actually hurt worse, because my neck was so swollen and ridiculous that I couldn't even turn my head to the side. The only way putting my head down would have felt better is if I was putting it down and through the slot in a guillotine. I kept my tonsils though! And I have spent my life hating them ever since. I'll get you one day, tonsils. Oh yes.

4. Mono -- The staple illness of high school. Uhhh... I got it from drinking after someone. Yeah, that's it, Mom. Who? Pick one of my friends, they're all kind of slutty. Not like me. I'll be getting my wings the next time that a bell rings, not that I am bragging or anything. The doctors told me that I should stay home from school for at least a week, but I felt good enough to go back after three or four days. Then they told me not to do any heavy lifting because somehow it could hurt my spleen. So on my first day back, I helped move boxes of new yearbooks. Why? Because that's just how I roll.

5. Pneumonia -- Could have been worse. Two days before I started feeling horrible I had been cleaning out the motor of an old refrigerator in which rodents had nested. I was convinced that I had Hantavirus, which is delightful. You see, you get Hantavirus from inhaling airborne particles from rodent feces. I have no idea how you get pneumonia, but I did. I was almost hospitalized, and I did hallucinate in the health center of my college. I threatened the nurse who took my blood by telling her, "If you try to steal my underwear, I swear to God, I'll kill you." I don't remember saying that, but they all had a great laugh when I came for my follow-up. I missed one week of school, out of the recommended two. I am just a badass like that.

6. Whatever I had the night after one final and before another final in law school -- All I know is that I yelled at some guy in the after-hours clinic, and ended up getting three shots in my ass. Then I took my hardest final while hopped up on Lortab. I nailed that final, by the way. I still don't know what I had, but it was positively miserable. I tested negative for strep and flu, but apparently I was talking to someone from school in the waiting room of the clinic. Except that they weren't really there. Still, I just went on and drove myself home. Because I am safe like that.

I have never had the chicken pox, and I have never been vaccinated for it. I have never had the flu, and have never been vaccinated for it. I can't even tell you the last time I had a tetanus shot. I just feel like my immune system can handle whatever you throw at it, with the 6 exceptions outlined above. Some doctors, in fact, think that my immune system is actually too good, and that it sometimes attacks my body. That is pretty much the opposite of what an immune system is supposed to do.

Add my super-fast metabolism to my psycho crazy immune system, and you have the issue I mentioned earlier, which is that I have absolutely no idea how to treat minor problems. I have no idea how to use over-the-counter medication. Nothing works. For example, if I take Motrin, I have to take like 5 of them. Usually the doctors just break out the hard stuff on me because, even when I was little, normal medicines just have never worked. In fact, even the hard stuff isn't guaranteed to work. I have had surgery twice, and both times they had to use more anesthesia than they have used on men twice my size.

So, in summation, in real-life Survivor (which is actually real life itself), I have already won the immunity challenge. So what, if every six years or so I get deathly ill? I rarely get the colds and other annoyances that other people deal with. And, on top of that, I am always getting prescribed medicines that other people who pay top dollar for. Although as far as I am concerned, they may as well be Tylenols. I have never been prescribed a controlled substance that impressed me. I just don't understand what people find so fun about them.

Bottom line: If you want to make me sick, don't bother breathing on me. It won't get me kicked off the island. Better bring Kryptonite, bitches.