Rebecca A. Foster

I'm not a hypochondriac, I'm just pretty sure every time I get sick I might die. A headache?  A likely brain tumor. Stomach cramps?  Uh oh, stomach cancer in the making! My mom says I get this from my Aunt Olga, who also leaps to the worst possible conclusions.  So I love taking my temperature, because it proves I really am sick, dammit! I even brought my favorite thermometer to China. And thank goodness I did, because I have come down with the flu/food poisoning (again!) and have taken my temperature approximately every hour in the last 24 hours. The highest it got was 102.7. I was simultaneously shaking under the covers and sweating like a lying pig, but thank goodness I had something to confirm my sickness. (You can't buy a thermometer here, btw, they don't use them.)  If I ever have kids, guaranteed they will tell their therapist about their crazy mom taking their temperature all the time.  Also, I love Andrew because he got me Sprite without being asked. What a nic...

Do you love reading about diseases and germs as much as I do? Then you must read the book A Field Guide to Germs, one of my favorite books. It gives a brief description of the history and symptoms of all kinds of critters we run across that can make us sick. Or dead.  I have a morbid curiosity with what can go wrong. (I get this from my mother's side; Hispanics love a good tragedy.) I took a class called Parasites and Man when I was in college, and that was it: I was hooked. In our training here we had a class on STIs, complete with pictures of diseased wangs and hoo-hahs. It was pretty much my favorite training class we took. Better than talking about germs? Seeing pictures of germs!  Maybe I have this morbid fascination because I think if you know what can hurt you, you can avoid it. Maybe not. But reading about the black plague and the mysterious British sweating sickness (still unindentified 600 years later) is a great way to fill a slow Sunday afternoon.  A Field Guide to Ge...