It shouldn't have surprised me one bit. It used to happen in high school and college all the time. Regardless of time of year, spring break or winter break, I would get sick. And not just a sniffly cold. We're talking Bronchitis or Bronchial Pneumonia. I spent months at a time taking a full load at school, working, and then doing homework. The minute one of those things was removed from my daily schedule, my immune system let it's guard down, and BAM!

Two weeks ago I had a particularly busy week at work, which ended with preparing numerous things for a baby shower, inculding a cake. I had just happened to schedule a week off directly after all of this was to take place. No particular plans had been made for this week, so I was free to watch cooking shows and shoe shop to my heart's content. And then I woke up Thursday morning with a sore throat. In my slightly raspy voice, I croaked to the boyfriend, "I think I'm getting sick."

I spent the next few days in this weird sort of "it could get better, or it could get worse" state. I continued to have the sore throat, sort of sickly but not really all that sick feeling. Seeing no improvement by Tuesday, I went to the urgent care clinic. After going over all my symptoms and taking a look in my throat, the doc gave me a 5 minute strep test. After about 3 minutes, we looked at the little strip on the test and could barely see a line indicating that I did indeed have strep throat. Three more minutes went by, and the line hadn't darkened any, but there was enough of something there for him to prescribe antiobotics and tell me to stay home from work the next day.

And then he gave me a quiz.
"What's that famous thing you eat to help a sore throat?"
"Ice cream?"
"Yeah, okay, but what else?"
"Jello?"
"Eh, there's something else."
"Um..."
"Campbell's Chicken Soup!"

So I headed to my local pharmacy to fill my prescription, and buy four cans of Campbell's Chicken Soup (they were on sale). And if you know me at all, I don't have to tell you that I headed home with some ice cream, too.