On the last evening of a wonderful 4-day backpack trip into the Eastern Sierras, I noticed a sensation in my throat, sort of a full and scratchy feeling. Not paying too much attention, I assumed that the extreme dust from the trail had irritated my nose and throat. In the middle of the night, I felt a bit achy, but chalked that up to sleeping on a thin pad and carrying a heavy load on the arduous hike. The next day, hiking out and back to civilization, I nearly forgot about not having felt well, I was able to push hard on the 8 mile hike. That night however, wow, I became really ill. Feverish, massive sore throat, cough, headache, runny eyes–yuck, I felt awful.

That was a week ago. After 3 days in bed and laying low at home, I have slowly been becoming well: able to venture out, walk the dog, accomplish a bit of work, food shop, etc. But what a humbling experience this has been. I had not been sick in many, many years–in fact, I prided myself on having vibrant health, on “never getting sick”–all of which I associated with eating healthfully, exercising regularly, and getting adequate sleep.

So much for that pretense of security, eh? Everyone gets sick! Some people are more susceptible to catching the germ that is going around, some people rarely become ill, and some of us are more resistant to germs and recover more quickly if an illness does take a stronghold. Like this flu bug did to me. In spite of my very good eating habits, and of being fit, I got sick. Perhaps the hard miles on the trail, eating trail food (and not very much of it), and the altitude had weakened my resistance–I will never know for sure.

After the initial shock that my body had “let me down” by becoming ill, I capitulated to the process, crawled into bed, and focused on getting well. I drank a lot of water, ate small amounts of healing foods, and was fascinated as I observed my body slowly regain its balance. I am still not quite 100%, but am feeling pretty close now.

My lesson is that in spite of my generally excellent health habits, I am simply human–I get sick–but I am becoming well.