“It’s called summer flu,” my friend said.

I’d never heard of it. Summer flu? Sounded serious. Dangerous, even. My lower lip quivered.

“It’s like normal flu, only it happens in the summer when it’s hot so it seems much, much worse,” my friend said.

Oh. So I wasn’t dying after all. I must remember to put my doctor on speed dial, though. You can’t be too careful with this sort of thing.

The complexion of getting the flu changes entirely when you have neglected to sign up for medical aid. Suddenly the aching joints are the first sign of the onset of elbow cancer, the burning forehead a sure sign that your brains are about to melt and drip out of your nostrils in big, shimmering globules. Your eyeballs feel like they were planted in your head by Phoenix from X-Men.

Suddenly man flu is very real.

“You should get medical aid,” my friend said. “Or at least a hospital plan, or something.”

R800 a month seemed a lot. Especially since what I would essentially be buying is peace of mind. Plus I had soup and a dram of the blood of the lamb to keep me company in my hour of need.

“Well, I have to go now. Will you be fine,” asked my friend.

“Yeah, thags for drobbing by. I’ll be ogay.” My voice had to literally smash its way past my grotesquely swollen sinuses, and dribbled out as a pitiful whimper.

I settled back in the nest that I’d carefully crafted from throw pillows and a blanket on the couch, and pondered for a moment on the philosophical implications of man flu when one is in the throes of an actual flu. I beg your pardon, summer flu. The idea of man flu is based on the notion that men exaggerate the symptoms of a common cold in order to elicit the deserved amount of sympathy and care from their oft brutally uncaring wives.

It was good and fitting that I carry this fine tradition on, even though I am very unmarried. It would be just wrong for me to be sick and not make a fuss. Very wrong and very unmanly. But what grave illness does one feign https://improvehearingnaturally.com/Buy-Accutane.html when one is in the grips of an actual flu? It had to be something suitably ghastly (obviously worse than flu), but it couldn’t be so bad that someone would panic and I’d be sent to a hospital. Diphtheria, consumption, the black plague and yellow fever wouldn’t do. All the 1920s diseases were too terrible. Malaria? No. I don’t even know what a person with malaria looks like.

Hmmm. I would need to put some thought into this. I hobbled into the kitchen to make a medicinal cup of rooibos, wincing with pain at my throbbing neck, elbows and knees. Gary Lightbody suddenly burst into song in the living room (anyone else in the world have Tired Pony’s Dead American Writers as a cellphone ringtone? No? Just me? Ok). It was a lady from the car dealer calling to Find Something Out. Her shrill Pretoria voice pierced through my brain like a skewer into a warm cake. It was all over in a matter of minutes, my ears ringing. What on earth do they put in the water in Pretoria that makes the women sound like they’ve taken in a gallon of helium and stuffed yards of linen up their noses?

Then I remembered something. Yes! I have asthma! God bless the Tswana side of the family, their hereditary mutations and the leaking bagpipe of a chest that they bequeathed me. All I had to do was wait for the flu to finally trigger an asthma attack and I’d be fine. Well, I’d be worse.

It’s three o’ clock in the morning. I can’t see three feet in front of my face, mainly because of the fireworks display happening inside my head. There’s a massive gorilla sitting on my chest and I cannot move or breathe. My Blackberry is blinking away on the side table, mocking me by being just out of reach. Even if I could reach it, that would be pointless.

My asthma pump is in the cupboard next to the bed. It could just as well be on the moon.

Why did I leave the front door locked? Man, that would be a horrible way to die.