exotic germs

You might remember the sudden germophobia I developed after watching the movie Contagion.  It wore off after a couple of days.  I stopped constantly applying hand sanitizer and switched over to moisturizer because it was drying out my already dry winter skin something fierce.

Flash forward to last night.  I decided to go to a lecture that was being given by a teacher from Venezuela who was traveling the region with a group of joyful fellow Venezuelans.  When my friend and I entered the venue, I realized the space was much smaller than I had envisioned. (Consider that foreshadowing.) Being part of a very friendly group of people, introductions were accompanied with handshakes, hugs and kisses on the cheek. 

Ah, everyone was so happy! And then I started hearing sniffling coming from a couple of people.  And then I overheard one person telling another how they're not feeling great, but should be okay for the lecture.  I had just shaken the man's hand!  Trying not to be too obvious, I made my way to the restroom and washed my hands thoroughly.  Drat!  No antibacterial soap.  I vowed that there would be no more physical contact for the rest of the night.  Should be easy enough.  And then I returned to the lecture room and noticed that another twenty people had arrived.  There was no way we were all going to fit into that room.

Yet we did.  Like a can of sardines, we somehow found just enough space for each person to sit on the floor for a couple of hours.  (Notice I left out the word comfortably.)  We were all extremely close.  Sick and well within millimeters of one another.  And it was hot in there.  The perfect place to incubate germs.  And these weren't any old germs - these were germs carried by South Americans.  They might have started out as your typical everyday North American, midwestern cold germs, but they'd surely morphed and mutated into something that my immune system would see and shrug it's shoulders out of sheer confusion, giving it way to consume my body and give me one of the worst colds in history.

The cold virus.  Looks harmless, doesn't it?

And I'm going on vacation in less than one week!

I was aware of every sneeze, every sniffle, thinking about those germs floating around in the air just waiting to get into my system.  I brushed a hair away from my face and remembered this scene from Contagion:



I was doomed!  DOOMED!  I made a conscious effort not to touch my face for the remainder of the lecture.  It was somewhat distracting. 


When it was over and time for us to go, there were more hugs and kisses all around.  I resigned myself to the fact that if I was going to catch anything, I'd probably already done so, so what was the point of trying not to touch anyone.  Mind you, I kept contact short and sweet and didn't hug the people I knew were sick, but there wasn't much I could do at that point.  What was done was done.

Of course, today I swear I'm feeling something coming on - knowing full well that symptoms wouldn't develop that quickly.  (Maybe it's the 4 hours of sleep that I got last night.  That would also explain my horrid sentence structure today.)  I'm not taking any chances though.  I'm starting to pop my zinc pills again and chug Emergen-C every 4 hours just to give my immune system that little boost to be able to stave off those tropical cold germs.  I will not be sick on my vacation!

By the way, it was a wonderful lecture, a good time, and I'm happy to have met such a great group of people.  Even if I do end up getting sick.